At the Department of Commerce, the proposed budget would discontinue federal funding for the Manufacturing Extension Partnership, a program that provides assistance to small and mid-sized manufacturers. The blueprint notes that “by ending federal funding, MEP centers would transition solely to non-federal revenue sources.” Hart said that the program would not be able to be sustained on a national basis, however, without federal funding. “These kind of cuts will undermine supply chains and regional clusters that are particularly important to sustained competitive advantage in advanced manufacturing,” he said.

According to science and technology experts, these components of Trump’s budget, as well as the budget’s overall funding cuts to federal agencies that support research and development, could hurt American innovation and manufacturing, and put future opportunities for job creation at risk.

“If these cuts were to be enacted, they would signal the end of the American century as a global innovation leader,” Joe Kennedy, another senior fellow at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, wrote in a blog post responding to the budget release. “The reality is that if the United States is going to successfully manage its growing financial problems and improve living standards for all Americans, it needs to increase its investment in the primary drivers of innovation, productivity, and competitiveness. The Trump budget goes in the opposite direction,” the post reads.

The call to eliminate the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy, or ARPA-E, for example, runs the risk of setting the country back in research and development. The budget blueprint argues that “the private sector is better positioned to finance disruptive energy research and development and to commercialize innovative technologies.”But that explanation glosses over the fact that government funding has historically played a critical role in the development and commercialization of new technology.

“The ARPA-E program was developed precisely because there is a gap in investment and funding in the private sector for early-stage development of innovative, new technologies because they’re incredibly risky,” Rob Cowin, of the Union of Concerned Scientists, said in an interview. “As technologies are built, and demonstrated, there’s a lot more appetite for private sector investment because there’s less risk. But at the beginning there’s a tremendous amount of risk, largely associated with cost and performance, and that’s where government funding can help get new technology off the ground.”

The president’s proposal to eliminate ARPA-E, in other words, seems to undervalue the importance of government funding to technological innovation. The suggested cut could also take the creation of new jobs off the table. “Eliminating ARPA-E means eliminating new opportunities to commercialize and manufacture the technologies of the future,” Cowin said. “Between 2009 and 2015, ARPA-E projects attracted over $850 million in private sector investment, creating new companies and new jobs, while growing new markets.”