Key Takeaways from the 2025 National Security Strategy: What Has Changed and What It Means for Business

Overview

In December of 2025, the Trump administration released its National Security Strategy (NSS), a congressionally mandated document that outlines United States national security priorities and the tools the administration intends to use to advance them. The NSS is intended to articulate a high-level framework for aligning policy priorities, rather than setting forth specific regulatory requirements. Unlike prior strategies, the 2025 NSS places economic power, industrial capacity and sovereignty at the center of U.S. national security policy, elevating trade, tariffs, immigration control and domestic production from supporting considerations to core strategic elements.

For companies, the NSS serves as a strategic signal of likely trade policy, technology restrictions, industrial priorities and enforcement direction. Below, we summarize key themes and compare them to earlier U.S. national security strategies, including the Biden administration’s approach, and highlight potential implications and considerations for business.

Bottom Line

The 2025 National Security Strategy represents a shift away from more traditional values-based multilateralism and toward a greater interest-driven, economic security and unilateral or regional approach. While the Trump Administration continues to use many tools—export controls, investment screening, sanctions, industrial policy—deployed in recent years, the NSS foreshadows that their application will be more transactional, unilateral, and conditioned on measurable U.S. economic and security benefit.

Companies should proactively:

• Reassess trade and export control exposure.
• Evaluate how their operations may align with U.S. industrial and security priorities, including regional supply chain priorities such as the Western Hemisphere.
• Consider potential early engagement with U.S. government stakeholders on higher-risk national security-related transactions and identify opportunities in line with stated “America First” national security and economic objectives.

Key Compliance and Risk Considerations

• Increased immigration-related scrutiny affecting workforce planning.
• Persistent sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering/Countering the Financing of Terrorism (AML/CFT) risk in high-risk jurisdictions.
• Elevated export control diligence for advanced artificial intelligence (AI), semiconductors, unmanned systems and cyber-related transactions.
• Greater enforcement attention on supply chains and third-country transshipment.

I. National Interest: Narrower and More Transactional

Scope of the National Security Strategy

• Defines U.S. national interest more narrowly than prior strategies.
• Prioritizes direct economic, industrial and security benefits to the United States.
• De-emphasizes values-driven or democracy-promotion rationales as a basis for policy.

Comparison to Biden NSS

• Prior NSS documents (including 2022–2024) framed national interest broadly, integrating democracy promotion, global stability and international institutions.
• The 2025 NSS marks a clear shift toward transactional, interest-based and sovereignty-focused decision making.

Implications for Companies

• U.S. support—whether diplomatic, regulatory or commercial—will increasingly depend on whether a transaction directly benefits U.S. economic or security interests.
• Potential for greater administration support for exports of commercial and military end-items, particularly to countries aligned with the United States.

II. Economic Security as National Security

Trump Administration NSS

• Explicitly treats trade, tariffs, export controls, industrial policy, and near-shoring of supply chains as core national and economic security tools.
• Endorses the strategic use of tariffs to promote re-shoring, near-shoring and reindustrialization.
• Elevates protection of the U.S. workforce across all sectors, not just defense.

Comparison to Biden-Era NSS

• The Biden-era NSS emphasized supply chain resilience and “friend-shoring,” often through incentives and multilateral coordination.
• The 2025 NSS relies more heavily on unilateral tariffs and regulatory/enforcement leverage.

Implications for Companies

• Increased likelihood of tariffs and trade remedies, both holistically and on targeted products.

• Heightened scrutiny of supply chains involving China or other strategic competitors, including offshore production, coupled with drive to nearshore supply chains to the Western Hemisphere.
• Primacy of commercial diplomacy offers opportunities for cross-border dealmaking in strategically aligned sectors.

III. Export Controls and Advanced Technologies

Trump Administration NSS

• Prioritizes U.S. leadership in AI, quantum computing, autonomous systems and enabling technologies, favoring selective restrictions alongside inducements.
• Indicates rewarding countries that align their export control regimes with U.S. standards.
• Signals a preference for rewarding aligned partners, potentially including expedited licensing and enhanced technology access.
• Promotes the U.S. “AI stack” abroad to displace foreign competitors.

Comparison to Biden NSS

• Continuity with Biden-era controls on advanced semiconductors and AI, but with a more explicit competitive and transactional framing.
• Less emphasis on multilateral coordination for its own sake; alignment is rewarded, not assumed.

Implications for Companies

• Expect stricter licensing scrutiny for cutting-edge technologies.
• Companies operating in aligned jurisdictions may benefit from expedited approvals.
• Export compliance programs should be reassessed for AI- and data-related exposure.
• Identify opportunities to support goals of remaining the world’s most scientifically and technologically advanced and innovative country, having the world’s most robust industrial base.

IV. Allies, Burden-Sharing and Defense Trade

Trump Administration NSS

• Pushes back against the notion that the United States should underwrite global security alone.
• Expects allies to take primary responsibility for regional defense.
• Signals U.S. support—particularly through defense exports—for countries that increase defense spending.

Comparison to Biden NSS

• Prior NSS documents emphasized alliance cohesion and collective action.
• The 2025 NSS conditions U.S. support on measurable burden-sharing.

Implications for Companies

• Opportunities for U.S. defense and dual-use exporters in allied markets.
• Increased scrutiny of allies’ export control “loopholes,” particularly with respect to China.
• Indications of less coordination with allies on the imposition of economic sanctions as well as sanctions relief, with more unilateral actions or staggered implementation with allies depending on the target of the sanctions.

V. China: Economic Rebalancing Without Decoupling

Trump Administration NSS

• Seeks to rebalance the economic relationship with China while maintaining deterrence against military conflict over Taiwan and Chinese control of vital sea lanes.
• Targets China practices such as subsidies, intellectual property (IP) theft and supply chain leverage.
• Does not categorically label China an adversary but actively works to limit Chinese influence and preserve U.S. economic preeminence.
• Consistent with prior strategies in identifying China as the central strategic competitor.
• Greater emphasis on market competition, tariffs and “managed cooperation,” less on global coalition-building.

Implications for Companies

• Continued high export-control risk for China-facing operations.
• Potential openings for exports of non-sensitive goods aimed at market competition.
• Heightened Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) and investment screening risk.
• Increased supply chain scrutiny and opportunities for strategic realignment, particularly for goods related to U.S. critical infrastructure and the defense industrial base.

VI. Conclusion

The 2025 NSS reflects a recalibration of U.S. national security policy that places greater emphasis on economic strength, industrial capacity and sovereignty. While many policy tools remain consistent with prior approaches, their application is expected to be more closely tied to U.S. economic and security interests. Companies that align their operations, investments and compliance strategies with these priorities, and evaluate potential early engagement with U.S. government stakeholders, will be better positioned to manage risk and respond effectively to stated policy expectations and opportunities.