Donald Trump’s forthcoming return as US president has left many in the research and science policy communities reeling. While some maintain it is too soon to tell whether worrisome campaign rhetoric will translate into new policies, many are panicking based on his previous actions as president, and the fact that he will come to the White House empowered by a Republican-controlled Senate.
There is significant concern now that politically charged but important research, including in areas such as climate change, renewable energy, reproductive health, foetal tissue and vaccines, will be deprioritised or completely cut at federal science agencies like the Department of Energy and the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
Budgets that Trump put forward while last in office repeatedly proposed funding cuts for research agencies, but Congress intervened. Now, with the Senate flipped and control over the House of Representatives still up in the air, many believe that Trump will attempt such cuts again but that this time they will stick.
‘The disaster these cuts would have represented for basic research, environmental science, energy R&D and more was averted only by the good sense of congressional appropriators, who rejected the cuts and provided at least modest increases instead,’ states John Holdren, an environmental and climate scientist who was former President Obama’s long-time science adviser. ‘But all indications are that the science and technology community cannot hope for such good outcomes this time around; it could be a catastrophe.’
Others, like University of Michigan organometallic chemist Melanie Sanford, suggest that deficit reduction under Trump will likely freeze or cut basic research agencies like the NIH and the National Science Foundation (NSF), where pay is already very low and grants have not kept up with inflation.
Anticipating cuts
Neal Lane, a physicist who served as science adviser to President Bill Clinton and previously directed the NSF, agrees. ‘We should be prepared for large budget cuts for the research funding agencies and even larger cuts for studies that conservatives don’t like,’ he warns. ‘By cutting back on R&D and making America unattractive to foreign talent, we will be ceding leadership to China, which, in spite of its current economic problems, is overtaking the US in many areas of science and technology.’
Also causing consternation is an expectation that the NIH, Centers for Disease Control and Food and Drug Administration (FDA), could be substantially reorganised in a Trump administration. In addition, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is predicted to be back in the crosshairs.
Christine Todd Whitman, who led the EPA under former President George W Bush, is worried. ‘We will be dissecting this election for years to come but, if Trump is serious about what he has been saying … he wants to do to grow the economy, then environmental regulation and science will be vastly discounted,’ she says.
‘This is the biggest flashing, clanging alarm bell that has ever sounded in American politics in my lifetime,’ states Derek Lowe. a US-based drug discovery chemist and Chemistry World columnist. ‘If Trump and his associates really did mean what they say then it’s going to be something we’ve never experienced before, and the impact on the US scientific enterprises will be catastrophic.’
But Kelvin Droegemeier, a well-respected atmospheric scientist whom Trump appointed as his science adviser, says it’s too early to tell what Trump’s victory, and the Republican majority in the Senate, means for science. ‘The president-elect believes quite strongly in an America that leads the world in science and technology and he also recognises the challenges in S&T competitiveness, including manufacturing, that are posed by the current global geopolitical climate,’ Droegemeier tells Chemistry World.
If history is any guide, he says, Trump will focus some attention on regulatory reform, including removing certain types of administrative obligations that ‘unnecessarily tie the hands of researchers and yield no real value with regard to compliance’. This would free up intellectual capabilities which now are being wasted on unnecessary red tape, Droegemeier says. But he emphasises that such compliance must be properly structured and effectively implemented to ensure safety and accountability.
Nevertheless, Droegemeier has no plans to return to Washington DC. The question of whom Trump will appoint as his science adviser or as directors of scientific agencies is another topic of concern. Some researchers predict it will be nearly impossible to recruit preeminent researchers or scientists into his administration.
Chemical industry enthusiasm
Meanwhile, the US chemical industry had a much warmer reception to Trump’s win. The Alliance for Chemical Distribution’s president and chief executive, Eric Byer, says Trump’s re-election ‘paves the way for a course correction on many of the Biden administration’s costly regulatory directives that add unnecessary burdens to America’s small businesses supporting the chemical industry’.
Jeremy Levin, former chairman of the Biotechnology Innovation Organisation and current chief executive of biopharmaceutical Ovid Therapeutics, is also optimistic. ‘As individuals and as an industry we have good insights and lines of communication with the Trump transition team and cabinet candidates whom we understand are being interviewed for both FDA and [Department of Health and Human Services] positions,’ he states.
During the last Trump administration, Levin notes, a programme was able to rapidly deliver Covid-19 vaccines. ‘Hopefully similar, thoughtful decision-making and consideration will be the hallmark of decisions … as the new administration thinks through its approach to healthcare policy,’ he says.
But Al Greenwood, a chemicals expert and deputy editor for the energy and chemicals consulting firm ICIS, describes a second Trump administration as a mixed bag for chemical companies. On the one hand, Trump has made it clear he will significantly reduce regulatory burdens that the chemical industry has complained about during the Biden–Harris administration, but the government deficit his policies are expected to create will likely trigger elevated mortgage interest rates that could hurt the sector, Greenwood adds. In addition, he suggests increased trade tariffs anticipated under Trump could make the chemical industry a target for retaliation, which would increase costs, lower margins and maybe even rearrange supply chains for the chemicals sector.
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