Will Donald Trump hurt America’s ranking?
HAS PRESIDENT Donald Trump been good for American innovation? His administration has championed cutting-edge industries such as semiconductors and artificial intelligence (“Whoever wins AI, WINS!”). It has presided over an unprecedented data-centre boom, ensuring that the country has more available “compute” than any other. And the Genius Act, passed last year, set the regulatory foundation for stablecoins, digital currencies linked to the dollar.
But Mr Trump has also attacked the country’s leading universities, restricted high-skilled immigration and cut funding to public institutions that support research. Academics complain of a “war on science”.
The overall effect on American ingenuity is hard to track. One place to look for clues is the Global Innovation Index, published each year by the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO). It ranks 139 economies based on 79 indicators, from R&D spending to school test scores. Some of the data is not timely enough to capture Mr Trump’s influence. But a variety of measures refer to his first year back in office.