Trump is declaring war on science, and the casualty will be the US economy.
The engine driving US economic and military competitiveness has been federal support of research universities. That partnership has produced most of the key inventions of the information age, including the internet, GPS, smartphones and AI.
Federal support of university research has also made possible the success of the US world-leading biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries.
Now Trump is sabotaging a R&D pipeline that is the envy of the world. The ‘big beautiful bill’ wants to cut the National Science Foundation budget by 55%.
DOGE has terminated more than 1,600 active grants from the foundation, worth $1.5B. And grants that actually made the cut are being disbursed at the slowest pace in at least 35 years.
The NSF directly supports 357,600 researchers and students. Or did.
Similar story at the NIH, the CDC and the FDA. RFK Jr., who thinks America should be subjected to an array of crackpot health theories, has already reduced the HHS workforce by 10,000 people, and now he intends to lay off an additional 10,000.
He wants to prohibit government scientists from publishing in the leading peer-reviewed journals. The CDC will be killed by the 21st C equivalent of leeches and bloodletting.
These budget cuts are hitting hard at America’s — and the world’s — leading research universities: Johns Hopkins is losing $800M; Columbia, $400M; the University of Pennsylvania, $175M.
And Harvard of course, which has lost more than $2.6B in federal funds.
In fact Trump says he wants to eliminate all of Harvard’s federal contracts and give the money to trade schools.
Everyone should have a trade to fall back on. But as valuable as trade schools are, they will not be making breakthroughs in fighting Alzheimer’s disease, cancer, strokes, sickle cell anemia or other diseases that are being researched at Harvard.
Then there is the administration’s assault on foreign students. Of the 277,398 Chinese students currently studying at U.S. universities, more than 110,000 are pursuing degrees in math, science and engineering — all areas of weakness for the US educational system.
Our competitors are no doubt giddy at the prospect of gaining an edge in technological competition at our expense. France, Australia and Canada are throwing out the welcome mat to scientists who can no longer do their work in the US.
But the biggest beneficiary is likely to be China. Even before the Trump cutbacks, China was already catching up to the US in scientific spending; its R&D budget has been growing by an average of 8.9 percent a year, compared with just 4.7 percent in the US.
So while China is investing to win the future, Trump is undercutting long-term US military and economic competitiveness with his anti-intellectual purge.
An American president is taking us backwards in the world. But at least we’ll have a big shiny parade.
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