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America’s Formula for Greatness Is Under Threat
Nov. 15, 2025, 7:00 a.m. ET
By Nicholas Kristof

What’s the secret formula that has made the United States the dominant superpower in the world today?

I’d point to three fundamental ingredients, each of which is now being weakened. When I think of the historical legacies of our generation and of President Trump, I wonder if they will be less about the political battles in the headlines and more about the slow shriveling of America’s global standing.

Patriotism is less about waving flags and more about defending these three forces that over two centuries have made America pre-eminent:

1) A commitment to education at every level, resulting in global leadership in science and technology.

I believe the answer to almost every question is education — the highest-return long-term investments are often in human capital. Yet throughout the ages there have always been those eager to execute Socrates, to subject Galileo to the Inquisition, to ban books.

America became the world’s leading nation largely because of its emphasis beginning in the 19th century on mass education when other countries educated only a sliver of elites, Claudia Goldin and Lawrence F. Katz argued in their landmark 2008 book, “The Race Between Education and Technology.”

The United States helped pioneer public elementary schools and widespread high school and college attendance; later, American research universities became global leaders and nurtured technology hubs in Silicon Valley and elsewhere. Thus the United States boasts the Magnificent Seven technology companies, while there isn’t anything comparable in Europe. America’s scientific and technological excellence arises in part because of a symbiotic partnership between universities, the federal agencies that fund research and the private companies that commercialize that knowledge.

America’s educational supremacy arguably began slipping decades ago, as some East Asian countries eclipsed us in high school graduation rates and in science and math skills among young people. But Trump is adding to the pressure by gutting the Department of Education, including research and data collection that show how we can improve outcomes. Even worse, he is waging war on America’s most eminent universities.

American excellence in science drives economic competitiveness and well-being. Yet Trump is winding down mRNA vaccine programs that are full of promise in tackling cancer and has slashed investments in medical research.

Any president should be proud of universities like Harvard and Columbia, not attempt to crush them. We stand up to China with not only aircraft carriers but, even more, by educating our own young people and leading in research in artificial intelligence, synthetic biology and materials science. Yet by some reckonings, China has already surpassed the United States in emerging technologies.

So we should be doing what we did after Sputnik in 1957, recommitting this country to science and education. Instead, the Trump administration’s hostility to great universities seems to reflect a larger scorn for science in fields from vaccines to climate change. It is the latest flowering of an anti-intellectualism that goes back to China’s first Qin emperor burying scholars alive and, in this country, to the Scopes trial, the Joseph McCarthy hysteria and the 2017 tax on university endowments.

2) An inclination toward free markets and free trade, supported by the rule of law.

This is the pillar that Trump is most respectful of. He mostly believes in capitalism and free markets — probably more than many Democrats — but has led a rapid retreat from free trade. His tariffs are the highest since the 1930s. Trump has also systematically chipped away at some of the underpinnings of a market economy. Markets thrive with prudent fiscal and monetary management, yet his tax cuts lead to soaring debt even as he tries to crush the independence of the Federal Reserve. Corruption is a bane of capitalism, yet his family has seemed to use the presidency as an A.T.M.

And the rule of law? England was the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution partly because of a legal system that offered protection and predictability. In contrast, Trump has periodically defied lower courts and used the Department of Justice to punish his political opponents. Mark L. Wolf, a federal judge appointed by President Ronald Reagan, announced this month that he was resigning to be able to speak openly about the Trump administration’s “assault on the rule of law” and the way that it poses an “existential threat to democracy.”

3) Immigration and the absorption of some of the brightest minds from around the world.

My dad, an Armenian refugee from Eastern Europe, arrived in the United States in 1952. Soon after, his landlady returned his rent, saying, “I can’t take money from a refugee.”

Such a welcoming spirit, while far from consistently applied, has enormously enriched the United States. Four of the Magnificent Seven tech companies are led by immigrants, and 46 percent of Fortune 500 companies were founded by immigrants or their children, according to the American Immigration Council.

These three factors are not a complete recipe for America’s greatness. The sheer physical size of our domestic market helped, along with democracy and the ease of interstate commerce. And even on those three, we’ve repeatedly fallen short.

Yet I see these three factors as central to America’s rise as the world’s leading power today. And these strengths are now being systematically undermined, especially universities, trade, the rule of law and recruitment of the world’s best minds.

The risks to America’s global pre-eminence get less attention than Trump’s White House ballroom, the government shutdown and his ugly statements about his opponents. But I’d argue that his most important legacy may be the damage he is doing to the underpinnings of our economic engines.

The Nobel in economic science went this year to three scholars who illuminated how innovation drives economic growth. They emphasized that this arises from immigration, from great universities, from openness to the world and to ideas — and consequently warned of “dark clouds” ahead.

Throughout history, we’ve repeatedly seen how great nations sometimes lost their energy and drive, slipping because of what Jawaharlal Nehru described in the context of India as a “gradual oozing out of hope and vitality.” In the year 1000, the greatest city in the world was Kaifeng in China, then the most important country in the world — but China and Kaifeng then lost ground for most of the next millennium before reviving in recent decades.

The United States may or may not experience such decrepitude, but decline seems to me more likely if America chokes trade and immigration while stifling universities. Without its secret sauce, America would be just one more tired old nation watching other, more youthful countries race past it. Those are the stakes.