Shunned by Trump, U.S. researchers wooed by world: report

US President Donald Trump arrives at the presidential terminal in Abu Dhabi on May 15, 2025. The United Arab Emirates is the third leg of Trump's visit to the region, which has already taken him to Saudi Arabia and Qatar. [AFP]

As U.S. President Donald Trump cuts billions of federal dollars from science institutes and universities, restricts what can be studied and pushes out immigrants, rival nations are hoping to pick up the talent that has been cast aside or become disenchanted, reported The New York Times on Wednesday.

Of 1,600 people who responded to a March poll in the journal Nature, many of them Ph.D. or postdoctoral students in the United States, three out of four said they were considering leaving the country because of the Trump administration's policies.

"This is a once-in-a-century brain gain opportunity," the report quoted the Australian Strategic Policy Institute as saying. The organization encouraged its government to act.

In another case, last week, at the urging of more than a dozen members, the European Union announced it would spend an additional 500 million euros, or 556 million U.S. dollars, over the next two years to "make Europe a magnet for researchers."

"Such a sum is paltry when compared with U.S. budgets," noted the report, adding that for decades, trying to compete with American institutions and companies has been difficult. The United States was a magnet for top researchers, scientists and academics. In general, budgets were bigger, pay was bigger, labs and equipment were bigger. So were ambitions.

In 2024, the United States spent nearly 1 trillion dollars, roughly 3.5 percent of total economic output, on research and development. When it came to the kind of long-term basic research that underpins American technological and scientific advancements, the government accounted for about 40 percent of the spending.

"That's the reason political, education and business leaders in advanced countries and emerging economies have long fretted over a brain drain from their own shores. Now they are seizing a chance to reverse the flow," added the report.