Science Policy Outlook for the Second Trump Presidency

How President-elect Donald Trump will approach science policy during his second term is difficult to predict, as the subject did not often surface during the 2024 campaign season. But Trump’s stances on broader issues have clear implications for science policy in some cases.

Trump’s general hostility toward China will likely prompt further restrictions on scientific and technological exchanges, continuing the trend that started in his first administration and was expanded on by President Joe Biden. Meanwhile, Trump’s opposition to Biden’s equity initiatives will likely force a rapid retreat from the subject by federal science agencies, and his promise to convert thousands of civil service jobs into political roles could prompt major turnover of scientists.

It is unclear who is responsible for science policy on Trump’s transition team, but among those focused on technology policy is Michael Kratsios, who served in the first Trump administration as U.S. chief technology officer in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and later became the acting head of the Defense Department’s R&D arm. Kratsios previously worked for venture capitalist Peter Thiel, who has close ties to Vice President-elect J.D. Vance.

The recent addition of technology mogul Elon Musk to Trump’s inner circle is a wildcard. Musk is poised to have huge influence over NASA policy given the integral role his company SpaceX plays in the U.S. space industry. The presence of Musk and Vance in Trump’s orbit could have a significant influence over the types of people Trump picks for top science roles.

Confrontation looms with Congress over spending cuts

Trump has already tasked Musk and biotechnology entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy with identifying ideas for $2 trillion worth of cuts to the federal budget. Congress is unlikely to accept cuts anywhere near that scale, which would affect countless politically powerful constituencies and require some support from Democrats to clear a Senate filibuster. (The federal government currently spends around $6 trillion annually, about a third of which is discretionary spending that Congress actively apportions.)

In his first term, Trump unsuccessfully sought to make steep budget cuts to many science agencies as part of a broader drive to reduce government spending. Congress uniformly declined to make those cuts and was even able to significantly expand some science agencies since Trump did not insist on tight budget caps during the negotiations on overall spending limits. 

Trump has expressed interest in rolling back some of Biden’s signature spending initiatives, such as the energy technology subsidies  in the Inflation Reduction Act and the semiconductor industry subsidies  in the CHIPS and Science Act. However, many of the programs created by those acts have bipartisan backing.

Given the likelihood of a showdown with Congress over spending, Trump has said he will challenge the Impoundment Control Act, which limits the president’s ability to withhold funds. During his campaign, he argued the act is unconstitutional.

In any event, Trump will likely have an easier time cutting taxes than cutting spending. Republicans will control the House and Senate in the next Congress, enabling them to use the reconciliation procedure to circumvent a Democratic filibuster. Trump used that maneuver to cut taxes in 2017, and extending those cuts is high on the Republican agenda for next year.

Congress may use the new tax reform legislation to strengthen the R&D tax credit, which the 2017 tax law weakened to offset the law’s overall costs. On the campaign trail, Trump said he will restore the R&D equipment expensing credit for U.S.-based manufacturers.

Some research advocates also hope that lawmaker interest in technological competition with China could result in budget increases for science agencies. A task force of research policy leaders is preparing to propose the new administration pursue a sequel to the National Defense Education Act of 1958, passed in the wake of the Soviet Union’s launch of the Sputnik satellite. Among the task force members is National Science Board Chair Darío Gil, who was appointed to the board by Trump. (AIP is a participant in the task force.)

STEM diversity programs to face immediate pressure

On day one of his new administration, Trump has pledged to revoke Biden’s executive orders promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts across government, which science agencies had pointed to as a basis for prioritizing programs that aim to diversify the STEM workforce. Trump has also already appointed senior personnel who have adversarial views toward DEI initiatives.

Trump’s deputy chief of staff for policy will be Stephen Miller, who after serving in the first Trump administration founded an advocacy group called America First Legal that has sued various universities for using diversity considerations in certain hiring decisions. The group also issued FOIA requests last month to six science agencies to probe their diversity programs and sued the National Science Foundation to compel compliance with an earlier FOIA request seeking information on political appointees at the agency.

DEI opponents in the administration will have many Republican allies in Congress. Notably, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) is expected to chair the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee, which oversees NSF, NASA, and the Commerce Department. Cruz recently published a report that blasts NSF for prioritizing diversity goals. America First Legal cited the report as inspiration for probing the subject across agencies. NSF may face a situation similar to a decade ago when another Texas Republican, Lamar Smith, scrutinized the agency’s grantmaking process in his role as chair of the House Science Committee.

Trump may also expressly prohibit certain uses of DEI concepts. During his first term, he restricted workforce diversity training across federal contractors, reacting to trainings his administration viewed as biased that were held at Department of Energy national labs. More broadly, Trump has promised to use the college accreditation system as a means of compelling schools to remove “all Marxist diversity, equity, and inclusion bureaucrats.” He has also threatened to expand the tax on university endowments created by his 2017 tax reform law, applying it to “schools that persist in explicit unlawful discrimination under the guise of equity.”

Research security to remain on the front burner

Trump’s focus on China is likely to stoke further action on research security, a topic that has received intense attention by U.S. policymakers since 2018. Some people he has already picked for top roles are known for having a deep interest in the subject, such as Rep. Michael Waltz (R-FL), his national security advisor, and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), his nominee for secretary of state.

Waltz was one of the architects of laws that expand disclosure requirements for federally funded scientists and ban them from participating in “malign” foreign talent recruitment programs. Rubio has introduced numerous bills on the subject and has advocated for banning citizens of China, Russia, and Iran from accessing DOE national labs.

Although Trump’s campaign speeches focused on his proposals for curbing illegal immigration, he has also pledged to use visa policy as a tool for research security. In a campaign video, Trump said he will “impose whatever visa sanctions and travel restrictions are necessary to shut off Chinese access to American secrets.” In 2018, Trump reportedly considered a proposal by Stephen Miller to ban Chinese citizens from receiving student visas. Though Trump declined that idea, in 2020 he barred graduates of certain universities in China from receiving visas for STEM graduate studies in the U.S., a policy that remains in effect.

Trump also said in the campaign video that he would bring back the Justice Department’s China Initiative, which aimed to curb espionage and research misappropriation occurring at universities and businesses. The Biden administration renamed and broadened the initiative on the grounds that the country-specific label created a “perception” that the department had a lower bar for prosecuting researchers of Asian descent.

There has, however, been considerable continuity between the Trump and Biden administrations on research security. For instance, Biden continued to implement a government-wide policy on the subject called NSPM-33 that Trump issued in his final days in office. Nevertheless, the Trump administration could choose to revisit some of the implementation decisions, such as the standards for university research security programs that the White House issued earlier this year.

Pandemic was turning point for Trump’s role in science policy

During the first three years of his first term Trump took a relatively hands-off approach to science policy, rarely commenting on the subject in public. In this rhetorical absence his daughter Ivanka Trump served as one of his administration’s principal advocates for STEM education, often appearing at events on the subject. Trump did take an active interest in NASA’s human exploration programs but mostly delegated the subject to Vice President Mike Pence, who chaired the National Space Council.

Trump took unusually long to fill the top science positions across his administration, though that dynamic was not unique to science roles. Most of the people he ended up picking for the positions were approved by Congress on bipartisan votes. Trump even retained Francis Collins, an Obama-era appointee, as director of the National Institutes of Health, a type of holdover that would now be unlikely in the much more partisan environment that the pandemic created for biomedical research policy.

The onset of the pandemic in Trump’s last year in office was the turning point for his engagement in science policy, putting him side-by-side with scientists in high-stakes press conferences on the spread of the coronavirus. After initially embracing the government’s science advice apparatus, he turned to promoting outside voices and unproven treatments.

The memory of the pandemic has not faded from policymakers’ minds, with many Republican lawmakers interested in overhauling public health agencies, including the National Institutes of Health. Trump shares an interest in shaking up the system, as evidenced by his embrace of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., which could fuel NIH restructuring proposals that have been floated in Congress.

Climate science may face direct challenge

Having dismissed climate change as a hoax, in his first term Trump explored the idea of challenging the conclusions of federal climate assessments. His first EPA administrator wanted to perform an adversarial review of such assessments but reportedly was blocked by Trump’s chief of staff at the time. Trump later recruited Princeton University emeritus physics professor William Happer, who believes the world would benefit from more carbon dioxide, to help structure the exercise.

Trump ultimately shelved the idea in the run-up to the 2020 election, concerned about the potential political blowback. Happer recounted Trump saying, “Well, we were going to do this, but it’s dragged on and on, the election is coming, and it’s the wrong time to start it. Let’s do this in my second term.”