The winners and losers of American atrophy

With universities in crisis, visas restricted and lower salaries across the board, Britain is poorly placed to seize the benefits of Trump's attacks on US academia and science

Donald Trump is not always wrong. Sometimes, there really are winners and losers. We know who the latter will be: America and Americans, who are seeing their rights eroded, economy hobbled and influence abroad diminished as a result of the Trump administration’s calamitous policies. But who might stand to gain?

Xi Jinping is an obvious candidate. Crippling US tariffs will only draw more Southeast Asian neighbours closer to China’s orbit. Not out of any affection – indeed, nations such as the Philippines have much to fear from Chinese military expansion – but on the basis that China is at least a reliable trading partner. Another winner is likely to be Vladimir Putin, who appears close to a ‘peace’ deal that will grant Russia much of what it has been unable to secure on the battlefield. But what of Britain? How might it benefit from American chaos?

Take academia. The Trump administration, through its Department for Government Efficiency, or DOGE, has declared war on American scientific research. In an apparent effort to reduce federal spending, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has cut 1,300 workers and cancelled more than $2bn in research grants. This is bad for a number of reasons.

The NIH is the single largest supporter of biomedical research in the world, and has been behind breakthrough treatments for everything from HIV/AIDS to strokes and heart disease. A 2023 study in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that 99% of treatments approved by the US Food and Drug Administration between 2010 and 2019 had links to research funded by the NIH.

Surely Britain, with its world-leading university and life sciences sectors, might be a beneficiary of this wanton destruction? Yet there are reasons to be sceptical. The first problem to note is that the UK’s universities are not in a good way. There have been almost 4,000 redundancies across the sector in 2024 alone, according to this grim tracker from Times Higher Education (THE). This is a result of the rolling financial crises affecting further education, the root cause of which is the UK’s unsustainable funding model.

Tuition fees in England are set to rise to £9,535 this autumn, but that is on the back of eight successive freezes at £9,250. As THE points out, the “real-terms value of this fee income in 2012 prices, when fees were tripled to £9,000, now stands at about £6,000 per student.” In search of money, universities have focused on international students, who can expect to pay up to £26,000 a year for lecture-based undergraduate courses¹. Consequently, international fees accounted for 41% of all tuition fee income in 2022/23, compared to 26% in 2016/17, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies.

However, this has become harder recently thanks to government policy. Many universities have reported significant falls in foreign students since a January 2024 ban on postgraduates bringing family members to Britain. There were 393,000 sponsored study visas granted to foreign students in 2024, representing a 14% drop compared with the year before.

Which brings us to the second reason why the UK is poorly placed to gain from America’s turn against science: immigration policy. That restriction on foreign graduates sponsoring family members was introduced under the government of Rishi Sunak, but Keir Starmer’s Labour Party is no less keen to reduce net migration. This obsession with net migration figures also partly explains the government’s reluctance to reach a youth mobility deal with the EU, despite widespread public support.

The third reason is money. Have you been to America recently? Sure, you might pay $20 for a burger and fries, but US wages are just off the charts compared with Britain’s. Academia is no different. The average full-time assistant college professor made $92,094 in the 2023-24 academic year, according to American Association of University Professors data, compared with £40,760 ($54,390) in the UK.

Finally, there is tax. The 40% higher income tax rate in Britain kicks in at income over £50,271. In the US, you won’t pay 37% until you earn $609,351. Which is more. Meanwhile, the very wealthy may be dismayed by changes to non-dom status.

To be clear, there will be a net loss from the end of Pax Americana and cuts to cancer research. In this way it is a little like Brexit: there are gains at the margin to be had, but they are significantly outweighed by the costs. Still, a more nimble government would be actively looking to attract brilliant American scientists, researchers and rich people with ideas to Britain. Instead, they are likely to take one look at our universities, visa regime, wages and tax rates and conclude things might not be so bad at home.

1. An undergraduate medical degree can cost foreign students up to £67,892 annually(!)