US R&D spending as a whole is up, but a lion's share of that (per your first link) is "development" ($314.5bn of $495.1bn). Academic environments, which are the

US R&D spending as a whole is up, but a lion's share of that (per your first link) is "development" ($314.5bn of $495.1bn). Academic environments, which are the ones affected by student visa policies and such, primarily engage in basic and applied research (not development), and are largely funded by the national government. Industry grants exist and can be real boons for researchers, but often come with strings attached and are often disproportionately targeted towards certain sectors. National funding for academic research, unfortunately, has been flat (or falling) over the last several years, and has repeatedly been targeted for cuts by the President (luckily reined in by Congress). For example, see the NSF's funding survey: https://www.nsf.gov/statistics/2018/nsb20181/assets/968/figures/fig05-02.pdf https://www.nsf.gov/statistics/2018/nsb20181/assets/968/figu...