From repealing climate policy to overturning guidelines for the safe development of artificial intelligence (AI), Republican Donald Trump has made a number of promises during his presidential campaign that could impact scientists and science policy. Ta. However, fulfilling all of his promises will not be easy.
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Trump, the second US president-elect, will have several advantages when he re-enters the White House in January. When he first took office in 2017, his victory came as a surprise, but many government watchers interviewed by Nature said he had no solid plan. By contrast, the Trump administration that takes office next year is likely to be better prepared and less likely to face checks on its power as Trump himself tightens his grip on the Republican establishment, says George Washington University. says political historian Matt Dallek. He studies the evolution of the modern conservative movement in Washington, DC.
But that doesn’t mean he can do whatever he wants, Dallek added. “Many of President Trump’s promises have some kind of revolutionary shake-up that could conflict with the troubling realities of implementation.”
Here, Nature speaks to policy and other experts about what could happen on a range of science issues during the second Trump administration.
artificial intelligence
The industry-friendly President Trump has promised to rescind US President Joe Biden’s executive order on AI, guidelines issued last year to develop the technology safely and responsibly. President Trump’s pledge is in line with the Republican Party’s platform, which says executive orders “stymie AI innovation.”
Given that executive orders can be revoked by the president at any time, President Trump will be able to implement his plans as soon as he enters the White House. But what would he put in its place?
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Suresh Venkatasubramanian, director of the Center for Technology Responsibility, Reimagining, and Redesigning at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, said the “focus is moving away from the regulatory environment” and toward technology companies making autonomous safety decisions. He says he will transition. Venkatasubramanian said he was “skeptical that it would be enough” to address AI-related risks over public safety, data privacy concerns and the use of biased algorithms that disadvantage certain people. said.
Biden’s executive order emphasized the need to ensure that AI models trained on human-derived data do not produce discriminatory results. That’s probably not a major priority for the new government, Venkatasubramanian said. The Republican Party’s platform states, “We will support the development of AI that is rooted in free speech and human flourishing.”
In general, “removing censorship and supporting free speech is a great idea,” said Roman Yampolsky, a computer scientist and AI safety researcher at the University of Louisville in Kentucky. But “removing regulations on the training of advanced AI systems is the worst thing we can do for the safety of the American people and the world,” he says. Given the risks involved in developing superintelligent AI systems that could potentially behave in unpredictable ways and harm humans, Yampolsky and other AI researchers have decided to pause AI development. , which can only be achieved through stronger regulation.
climate change
Under President Trump, who has long denied the dangers of climate change while prioritizing the economic benefits of expanding domestic fossil fuel production, many federal efforts to combat climate change may stall or reverse. expensive. Still, policy experts say Trump is unlikely to halt America’s gradual transition to clean energy.
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For example, it won’t be easy to undo Biden’s signature climate change accomplishments. The Inflation Control Act of 2022 (IRA) created a significant amount of federal investment in climate change and clean energy, currently estimated at more than $1 trillion. Repealing this law would require a bill from the U.S. Congress. But even if Republicans were to control both chambers of Congress, businesses and leaders in conservative U.S. states that already benefit from IRA investments would not be eager to cut off the flow of federal funds. Maybe not, says Joanna Lewis, director of science and technology. She completed the International Relations program at Georgetown University in Washington, DC.
If President Trump moves to weaken climate change regulations for things like power plants and cars, it could have an even bigger negative impact on climate progress. Similarly, his pledge to impose new tariffs on products from countries like China and Mexico could actually increase the cost of clean energy technology, said David, a political scientist at the University of California, San Diego. Victor says.
The president-elect also pledged to withdraw the United States again from the 2015 Paris Agreement, which commits countries to limiting global warming to 1.5 to 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. The Trump administration had to wait until 2020 to formally withdraw from the accord last time, but Biden moved to rejoin it just months later in office. However, according to the terms of the agreement, the withdrawal process will only take one year this time.
Many climate observers say the withdrawal of the United States, the world’s second-largest emitter of greenhouse gases, from joining the deal could reduce pressure on China and other countries to step up efforts to curb emissions while time is running out. It says that there is a sex. “This is a pivotal decade for climate action, and four more years of the Trump administration could be disastrous in terms of mobilizing climate action,” Lewis said.
health
In the weeks leading up to the U.S. presidential election, Mr. Trump teamed up with politician Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to tackle the root causes of chronic disease, remove toxins from the environment and fight corporations to “make America back together.” “I’ll make you healthy,” he promised. corruption. President Trump has upset public health and health policy researchers by saying he intends to let President Kennedy, who has questioned the safety of vaccines, “run amok” on health issues.
It remains to be seen whether President Trump will nominate Kennedy to a post such as secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), or whether the U.S. Senate will approve such a move, but it remains to be seen whether Kennedy will nominate Kennedy to a post such as secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), or whether the U.S. Senate will approve such a move. It’s clear that they’re listening.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. ran as an independent candidate for president in 2024, but later withdrew his candidacy and endorsed Trump.Credit: Rebecca Noble/Getty
Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association in Washington, D.C., said Mr Kennedy’s long-standing questions about the vaccine approval process could undermine confidence in the jab and cause a resurgence of the disease. I am concerned about Mr. Kennedy’s role in such as measles. “If we do some of the things that[Kennedy and Trump]have verbally said, people are going to get sick and die because of the confusion around vaccines,” he says.
Diana Zuckerman, director of the National Center for Health Research, a nonprofit think tank in Washington, D.C., said some of Kennedy’s goals are good, such as cracking down on industry ties at regulatory agencies such as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. . . But these goals are consistent with what happened during the first Trump administration, when Trump installed people with close industry ties, such as former Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, in key health positions. She says it’s hard to know what will happen because they don’t.
Given President Trump’s isolationist approach and his past statements criticizing the World Health Organization, aid to global health is also likely to be “significantly reduced” during President Trump’s second term. , says Ezekiel Emanuel, a bioethicist and longtime observer of biomedical funding in the United States. at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. The United States is a “major player” in funding global health initiatives, Emanuel said. This includes, for example, programs aimed at ending the global AIDS epidemic. Therefore, “it’s hard to be optimistic” about the future, he added.
overseas scientific partnerships
During his first term, the Trump administration banned people from six countries “at risk of terrorism” from entering the United States and implemented a counter-espionage program called the China Initiative, which led to the led to an arrest. Chinese heritage. The Biden administration has lifted the travel ban and ended the China Initiative, but federal officials continue efforts to prevent foreign interference in U.S. research.
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Experts say it is unclear whether the second Trump administration will revive the China Initiative, but the Republican-led House of Representatives passed legislation to do so in September. But Adam Cohen, an attorney at Siskind Sasser in Memphis, Tenn., who focuses on academic immigration and argues that the president has broad authority to enact such policies, believes the travel ban is He said there is a high possibility of a revival.
Jennifer Steele, an education policy researcher at American University in Washington, D.C., said the new administration will likely tighten visa restrictions for foreign researchers and students from some countries, just as the first Trump administration did. Deaf, he says. Policies that make it difficult for international and U.S. researchers to meet also make it difficult to create new scientific collaborations, said Caroline Wagner, an expert in science, technology and international affairs at The Ohio State University in Columbus. He says he will. Because such partnerships are facilitated by direct contact. “Collaboration doesn’t start with people who are far apart just sending each other emails,” she says.
But there may be one bright spot on the cooperation front, at least when it comes to the U.S.-China partnership. Dennis Simon, an adjunct fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible States and Strategic Studies, a foreign policy think tank in Washington, D.C., believes there is a strong possibility that a key agreement governing U.S.-China scientific cooperation, which has expired over the past year, will be reached. It was announced by the Biden administration ahead of President Trump’s second inauguration in January. The scope of any renewed deal would likely be more limited given rising U.S.-China tensions, but the existence of a deal would show “both governments welcome cooperation,” Simon said. say.
