Science and R&D

Join ITIF for an expert panel discussion on the growing challenge of retaining scientific talent in the United States. Panelists will examine whether recent departures signal the beginning of a broader trend, what factors are driving scientists to leave, and which policies can help the United States retain top researchers and bolster innovation and economic competitiveness.

The utopian vision of globally integrated, democratic, free-market economies working together in harmony has not materialized. Meanwhile, the belief that China could not innovate—and that America would continue to lead in advanced technologies—also has proven to be false. These new realities require bold reforms in the U.S. research system.

Both small and large firms are essential to America’s innovation system because they specialize in different forms of innovation. Congress should double the regular R&D tax credit to 40 percent and reduce the red tape associated with claiming it.

Canada should significantly expand commercialization-focused grant programs through the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) and increase Canada’s overall health science research investments to a scale commensurate with global competition.

Canada funds university research but gives universities too little reason to turn that into Canadian firms, patents, and industrial capacity. To better align their incentives with national goals, funding should flow in part on standardized commercialization outcomes, with universities left to decide how to deliver them.

OMB’s proposed rule to increase the productivity and success of the U.S. scientific research establishment is commendable. But the rule in its totality would introduce dangerous and counterproductive revisions to the Uniform Guidance that would drastically reshape the American scientific enterprise for the worse and impose severe and long-lasting economic damage.

In a survey of 1,000 U.S. researchers supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), 13 percent said that their labs had lost researchers to other countries as a result of NIH funding changes, while 14 percent reported that immigration policies forced scientists, students, and postdocs to turn down offers to work in NIH-supported labs.

Increased federal funding for STEM research is necessary but not sufficient for America to avoid losing to China. It’s also time for a new model for federal research funding that focuses on the technology needs of national power industries and directly benefits firms in the United States.

Canada says it wants to be a technology and innovation economy, but its research budget still treats balance across disciplines as the priority. If innovation is the actual goal, the Carney government should shift funding from social sciences and humanities toward NSERC and CIHR.

China has overtaken the United States in R&D investment for the first time amid slowing U.S. R&D growth. Without stronger policy action, America risks falling further behind.