One of the U.S. economy's biggest strengths has been effectively kneecapped by President Donald Trump's administration, according to a new analysis from The Bulwark's Catherine Rampell.
In a Thursday essay, Rampell argued that Trump's policies during the first year of his second term have been "both disruptive and deeply damaging." She observed that the United States' previous dominance in the areas of research and development, medical research and other fields has since been decimated largely due to the Trump administration's impact on higher education.
According to Rampell, the Morrill Act of 1862 — which created land-grant colleges – put the U.S. on the path of creating a "knowledge economy." She further noted that opening up the immigration system to "attract the best and brightest scientific talent from around the world" has paid dividends." According to a 2015 University of Chicago Journal of Labor Economics study, foreign workers in the STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) sector have resulted in anywhere from 30 to 50 percent of all productivity in the U.S. economy between 1990 and 2010.
However, Rampell asserted Trump's policies were rapidly undoing that progress by making it "dramatically harder for high-skilled workers to come to or stay in the United States." This includes Trump imposing a $100,000 fee on employers who bring in H-1B visa workers from overseas. This is despite companies already having to certify that foreign employees with sponsored H-1B visas are being paid the prevailing wage and not depriving a U.S. citizen of a job opportunity.
Additionally, the Trump administration issued a rule last month making it more difficult for foreign-born recent university graduates — including those who graduated from American colleges — to getting visas for working highly skilled jobs. Rampell also reminded readers that later this year, the administration is expected to roll out a separate rule making it harder for foreign STEM students to remain in the U.S. after graduation and obtain careers with student visas.
"All of this amounts to almost masochistic levels of economic self-sabotage," Rampell wrote.
The Bulwark writer pointed out that "education-related travel" is actually the United States' largest economic export by far, contributing $55 billion worth of value to the U.S. economy by way of foreign students attending American universities. She wrote that those students typically pay "full freight" to study in the U.S., which ends up "cross-subsidizing the tuition charged to U.S.-citizen undergrads." And not only is education-related travel so lucrative for the U.S. — it dwarfs the second-largest export (natural gas) by more than $20 billion.
"Trump officials seem unperturbed by this historic brain drain. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent even gushed last year that all those expert civil servants laid off by DOGE would soon be freed up to work in the factories newly created by Trump’s trade wars," Rampell wrote. "Alas, that plan hasn’t panned out either: The manufacturing industry is hemorrhaging jobs. Turns out the sectors driven by brains and brawn are both struggling in the Trump economy."
