Experienced CEOs know that brand equity can be a company’s most valuable asset, one that often doesn’t appear on the balance sheet. Companies build trust, credibility, and goodwill over decades through consistent performance.
But as any chief executive knows, the strongest brands are rarely destroyed by their competitors. More often, brands are weakened by a company’s own choices that erode the very qualities that made them successful in the first place.
This principle applies to nations as well. As the United States marks the 250th anniversary of its independence, Americans need to ask not only whether their country remains one of the world’s most influential powers, but whether they have the internal qualities that sustain that influence.
Recent global polling suggests that America’s reputation has weakened. Pew Research Center’s 2026 survey of 36 countries found that a median of just 37% of respondents expressed a favorable view of the United States, compared with 57% who held an unfavorable view. China was viewed more favorably than the U.S. in most of the countries surveyed.
Separately, Gallup polling found that global approval of U.S. leadership fell from 39% in 2024 to 31% in 2025. Approval of Chinese leadership rose from 32% to 36% over the same period. Among NATO allies, approval os U.S. leadership fell 14 percentage points to 21%.
It’s clear that U.S. reputation has taken a hit. But it’s more important to ask whether America’s current policy choices are gradually eroding the sources of what made it influential in the first place.
America’s global standing has never rested solely on its economic size or military capability. Its enduring advantage also comes from its world-class universities, deep financial markets, and leading research institutions. Together, these strengths enabled the United States to attract exceptional people from around the world and give them the freedom to transform industries. Take Google cofounder Sergey Brin, who came to the United States from the Soviet Union as a child. Just this year, Chinese-born mathematicians Hong Wang and Yu Deng, who earned their Ph.D.s at MIT and Princeton, respectively, were awarded Fields Medals for breakthroughs in mathematics; both now teach at U.S. universities.
In short, the U.S. didn’t become powerful just by being bigger. Instead, it was more magnetic—a trait that has produced extraordinary returns.
According to NAFSA, international students contributed $43.8 billion to the U.S. economy and supported almost 380,000 jobs during the 2023-2024 academic year. The National Foundation for American Policy reported than almost one quarter of all U.S. startups worth $1 billion had at least one founder who first came to the U.S. as an international student; almost 60% were founded by an immigrant.
Recent policy developments risk weakening that American advantage. Expanded visa screening and vetting, restrictions affecting international students from certain countries, greater scrutiny of universities’ foreign funding and research partnerships, and cuts and uncertainty surrounding federal research funding could make the United States less attractive to the world’s most talented students and researchers.
New international student enrolment at U.S. colleges and universities fell 17% in fall 2025, according to the Institute of International Education.
These policies may be founded on legitimate national security, economic, or fiscal concerns. But they come with trade-offs.
Businesses understand the importance of talent. Great companies compete relentless for the world’s best people, understanding that innovation is founded on human capital. Governments that want to lead in artificial intelligence, biotechnology, quantum computing, advanced manufacturing, and clean energy will need to do the same.
If the world’s most talented young people choose Beijing, London, or Singapore over Boston, San Franciscom or Austin, it will mean fewer U.S. startups, a weaker research ecosystem, and a narrow marging of technological leadership.
And once an ecosystem loses its magnetism, it can be hard to get it back. Competitive decline rarely happens from a dramatic collapse, but rather through incremental decisions that gradually make a system less attractive to exceptional people.
The U.S.-China relationship makes this challenge more difficult, yet also more important. The strategic competition between the two largest economies will shape policy for years to come. The answer, however, should be targeted and selective, rather than a blanked suspension.
It’s true that some technologies are too sensitive to share. Some research relationships warrant scrutiny; some foreign investments should be restricted.
But scientific inquiry does not stop at national borders, and many of the world’s most consequential problems, from pandemics and climate change to energy security and food production, cannot be solved by one country working alone.
U.S. universities and companies succeed when researchers can exchange ideas with counterparts around the world. This collaboration also allows U.S. institutions to shape research agendas, set international standards, and remain at the center of global scientific networks.
The policy challenge isn’t about choosing between security and openness, but rather designing policies sophisticated enough to achieve both.
Carefully targeted export controls, rigorous protection of sensitive technologies and transparent research-security standards can coexist with robust academic exchange, joint research on global challenges and continued recruitment of exceptional international talent. Sustaining carefully designed channels for academic exchange and scientific cooperation, while protecting genuinely sensitive technologies, would strengthen America’s long-term competitiveness.
It would also bolster a defining characteristic of America’s national brand: The confidence that openness, excellence and innovation remain mutually reinforcing.
Confidence matters. A country that believes in its own competitive strength does not need to shut out talented people to protect its position. It sets clear boundaries around what must be protected while remaining open to the people and ideas that can make it stronger.
Successful companies understand this. When competitive pressure intensifies, they do not make themselves less attractive to top talent. They invest more heavily in becoming the employer of choice. They strengthen their culture, research capabilities and opportunities for innovation.
Nations—and the U.S.—should think the same way.
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This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
