President Donald Trump may have taken an axe to one of the U.S. economy's most important sectors, and it's already proving to be "deeply damaging," according to one analyst.
Catherine Rampell, economic editor at The Bulwark, argued in a new article on Thursday that Trump's policies have made America's educational system worse, causing America to lose its edge in important fields like aerospace, artificial intelligence, and defense research and development. She argued the policies Trump and his MAGA allies have pursued created what she called "the Great American Brain Drain," one that seems likely to last long into the future.
“'I love the poorly educated,' Donald Trump once declared. That was back in 2016, during his first presidential campaign. Now, a decade later, he and the rest of the MAGA movement have manifested that love into policy, with a series of changes that have hobbled America’s entire knowledge sector," Rampell wrote.
One of the most damaging policies Trump has enacted is his restrictions on immigration visas. Rampell argued that the restrictions have been "disastrous" for prestigious institutions, many of which recruit highly skilled immigrants for research and academic purposes.
"All of this amounts to almost masochistic levels of economic self-sabotage," she wrote.