This is how it always goes in the EU. "The US becomes less reliable/invests less/... so we'll do it and put in a BIG effort" big announcement from Brussels. Usu

This is how it always goes in the EU. "The US becomes less reliable/invests less/... so we'll do it and put in a BIG effort" big announcement from Brussels. Usually repeated 5 times or so by some head of state of France and/or Germany. Then you check the "BIG effort" the EU makes and it's, 10 years of 0 budget + 5% of the budget US invests yearly for 3 years + never looking at it again. To make it worse from that point, they mostly don't divide such budgets across a million small proposals like the US does. No, the politicians in the Brussels find 2 or 3 companies or institutions they like and sign a contract with them. Which results in the many (usually small) companies that actually have accomplishments not getting their business, but big consultancies or institutions or ... getting the contracts by promising to divide the business among pre-agreed subcontractors (doing the EU's job for them, or at least the administration/checking job the US government does in the US, and the subcontractors especially have to be in the right countries). Afterwards, they don't even check what was actually accomplished, and intervening is just unheard of. Meanwhile you look at it, and you're forced to conclude: 1) scientists will not be leaving the US under Trump. Yes the difference between the EU and US will become smaller, but still heavily in favor of the US (as in >100% difference, factors, not percentage points). In pay, in budget (ie. for research equipment), in infrastructure, in existing knowledge, and of course in future job prospects after research. Also: it's not just the US universities that are coming under increasing pressure. 2) the EU brain drain towards the US will continue in other sectors too (IT, medicine, pharma, ...) 3) cloud business will continue migrating to the US (whether we're talking Salesforce or AWS EC2) 4) factories will keep migrating to the US (already started long before Trump, so it's not his accomplishment, and they won't be providing the jobs hoped for, but they'll keep migrating to the US)