As a candidate for president, Donald J. Trump scarcely mentioned the word "tech." One year since he took the oath of office, that hasn't changed much. And yet just a year in, the Trump administration has shaped policy in ways that will radically alter the country's long-term ability to innovate—and often not for the better.

Trump's public relationship with tech titans has eroded, thanks to his positions on immigration, climate change, and more, despite attempts to build up goodwill during his transition to the White House. Meanwhile, the ranks of tech talent within the administration have shrunk, with top positions like chief technology officer at the Office of Science and Technology Policy, left wide open. Senior advisor and presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner did launch the so-called Office of American Innovation, but the tiny shop's primary focus is modernizing government, not enabling innovation across the country.

Considering all this, it might seem like a safe bet that Trump's first year in office would have a minimal effect on the future of innovation in the United States. Yet despite his public focus on border walls and coal country, that's where the policies his administration have actually enacted may end up being most impactful.

Brain Drain

The most pronounced of these changes comes from the Trump administration's immigration overhaul. Just weeks after the inauguration, the president's travel ban on immigrants from predominantly Muslim countries threatened the livelihoods of so many researchers and tech workers who have come to the United States from those places. The threat to academic institutions was so grave, in fact, that it played a critical role in the Ninth Circuit's initial decision to block the ban. "The States contend that the travel prohibitions harmed the States’ university employees and students, separated families, and stranded the States’ residents abroad," the court wrote in its decision. "These are substantial injuries and even irreparable harms."

'It could be people just saying, "I don't like the US anymore. Screw 'em."' Rob Atkinson, Information Technology and Innovation Foundation

The Supreme Court later upheld a revised, but still sweeping version of the ban. Since then, the so-called Trump Effect has manifested itself in college enrollment offices across the country, where nearly half of all universities reported a decline in international student applications in an annual report by the Institute of International Education. Overall, international applications declined an average of seven percent in 2017. In Canada, by comparison, foreign applications in 2017 surged by more than 25 percent.

"It could be because of a fear that you're not going to get your visa, or once you get your visa it’s going to be yanked out," says Rob Atkinson, president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation. "It could be people just saying, 'I don't like the US anymore. Screw 'em.'"

The fallout extends beyond academia. Last year, the administration halted a popular policy called the International Entrepreneur Rule, which gave non-citizen entrepreneurs temporary protections for starting up their businesses in the United States. A recent court case allowed it to resume, but its longterm future remains in question. The Trump administration has also thrown additional hurdles into the immigration process for highly skilled H-1B visa holders, issuing a record number of so-called "requests for evidence," which require employers to provide additional justification for hiring immigrants. Meanwhile, the administration has floated plans that would prevent the spouses of H-1B visa holders from working.

All of this contributes to a general skittishness in would-be students, entrepreneurs, and tech workers to set down roots in the United States, even as countries like Canada, France, and Chile aggressively court them.

"Immigrants and their children founded 40 percent of Fortune 500 companies, and immigrant entrepreneurs have started more than half of startups valued at $1 billion or more in the US," says Linda Moore, president and CEO of the tech advocacy group TechNet. "That's completely impossible to argue with. Our point of view is we need to be welcoming these entrepreneurs from all over the world to start and grow their jobs here."