Reference News Network July 27 report: The U.S. "Wall Street Journal" website published an article titled "U.S. Brain Drain Could Become Global Brain Gain" on July 11. The author is Christopher Mims. The following is a compilation:

The United States has drastically cut research programs and funding, reformed policies for technical workers' immigration, which threatens one of America's major economic advantages: innovation driven by talent. Other countries around the world will benefit from this.

Since the end of World War II, federal funding has helped American companies dominate the forefront of computing, space exploration, and medicine, providing momentum for national economic development. This has made the United States a destination for aspiring researchers, engineers, and entrepreneurs from all over the world.

Now, the situation is changing rapidly. In March 2025, a survey of more than 1,600 scientists in the United States by the British journal "Nature" found that three-quarters of them had considered leaving the United States. Respondents specifically mentioned the hostility of the Trump administration towards scientific fields and scientists.

For a long time, about three-quarters of international students who obtained their doctorates in the United States chose to stay in the country for a long time. They are well-trained and costly to train, and the ability of the United States to retain these talents is one of the key factors behind its leadership in innovation.

This week, Frances Arnold, a 2018 Nobel Prize winner and professor of chemical engineering at the California Institute of Technology, wrote to me after attending a scientist's annual meeting in Germany: "Today, our status as a global beacon of outstanding talent is under threat."

This obviously brings huge potential costs to the economy. A recent analysis by economists at American University found that existing and proposed cuts in federal research spending could severely damage the U.S. economy. They found that if public R&D spending is cut by 25%, it would ultimately lead to a 3.8% annual reduction in the U.S. GDP.

As of May this year, the budget of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) had been cut by 40%. In the tax and spending bill signed by the Trump administration on July 4, the government further reduced the budgets of major U.S. research funding agencies.

The budget of the National Science Foundation was cut by more than 50%, approximately $5 billion. According to estimates by the agency, this will cause 78% of early-career researchers supported by it to lose funding. The research mission budget of NASA will be cut nearly in half, reducing $3.4 billion. The list of cuts goes on, with one institution after another being affected.

Michael Kratsios, the science advisor to President Trump, pointed out that the funding cuts should be a "wake-up call" for the scientific community, because since 1980, the return on federal investment in the scientific community has been "declining". He said, "Political bias has replaced the pursuit of truth."

The government's funding cuts have also affected universities, with hundreds of billions of dollars in grants canceled, and new restrictions have been placed on how scientists use the funds.

The United States is also increasing policy reforms to raise the barriers for technical immigrants entering the country or even banning them from entering. This means that the chances of technical immigrants staying in the United States have decreased.

Google, Amazon, and Moderna were all founded by immigrants or children of immigrants — nearly half of the Fortune 500 companies are like this. Many researchers and economists are worried that funding cuts and changes in immigration policies may hinder top global talent from entering the United States.

Currently, only about 40% of international students who obtain degrees in the United States choose to stay there long-term. Arnold said this is not a new phenomenon, but funding cuts and restrictions on technical immigration could worsen the situation.

Many countries are eager to seize the opportunity while the U.S. is cutting technology funding. At the end of June, Arnold attended a Nobel laureate meeting where representatives distributed brochures promoting a project to attract researchers to Germany. The brochure emphasized that Germany's research and business environment is "international and friendly."

Canada, the UK, and China also have similar projects. Nicolas Papandreou, a member of the European Parliament representing Greece, recently told me that although his organization usually acts slowly, some members are studying how to quickly establish and fund a project to attract U.S. researchers so that Europe can benefit from the potential "brain gain".

Companies that once sought to attract the best and smartest people from around the world to the U.S. are now avoiding the complex procedures of U.S. immigration laws and setting up offices directly where the talent is located.

Amazon's largest office is not in Seattle, but in Hyderabad, India.

NVIDIA recently announced plans to open a new research center in Shanghai.

Nobel Prize winner Arnold said that the reduction in public R&D spending and the rejection of those willing to take advantage of these funds in the U.S. will have a chain reaction in the coming decades.

She said, "Our large enterprises will find it difficult to recruit scientific talents, start-ups will struggle to emerge, we will lack talents to educate the next generation, and we will lack talents to provide advisory consulting services to the U.S. government and defense agencies." (Translated by Hu Guanghe)

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