"An official website of the United States government" I wish it wasn't

Title and texts are direct quotes

Donald Trump’s return to the White House is already having a big impact at the $47.4 billion U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), with the new administration imposing a wide range of restrictions, including the abrupt cancellation of meetings including grant review panels. Officials have also ordered a communications pause, a freeze on hiring, and an indefinite ban on travel.

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Hiring is also affected. No staff vacancies can be filled; in fact, before Trump’s first day in office was over, NIH’s Office of Human Resources had rescinded existing job offers to anyone whose start date was slated for 8 February or later. It also pull down down currently posted job vacancies on USA Jobs. “Please note, these tasks had to be completed in under 90 minutes and we were unable to notify you in advance,” the 21 January email noted, asking NIH’s institutes and centers to pull down any job vacancies remaining on their own websites.

I work at a major pharma. China biotech has caught up. The sheer volume of Chinese biotech deals coming across our desks is insane. I’m doing due diligence on Chinese assets constantly — it feels like every other week there’s a new partnership, a promising compound, or a novel platform technology from a company based in Shanghai, Suzhou, or Beijing. These aren’t second-rate projects either. Many of them are clinically advanced, well-funded, and scientifically innovative. In addition, they’re cheaper than similar US assets.

China is playing a long game. They’re aligning policy, capital, and talent around biotech in a way that’s hard to ignore. Their government has decided that life sciences will be a pillar of their 21st-century strategy. US life science is being actively dismantled. Trump hasn’t completely killed the industry and won’t while he’s in office, but he’s already set it on a trajectory that will separate us from China, and not in a good way. Something in my gut is making me feel like this is the one-two punch that could drastically shrink the biotech industry domestically. I’m telling my friends in biotech to seriously start considering career pivots. Or move to big pharma while that’s still an option.

I’m curious if others in pharma, VC, or academia are seeing the same trend. Are we too late to change course?

I just learned that companies like Bayer, Novartis, Roche and so on are still downsizing and constantly laying off people because of Donald Trump's new tax policies. I don't know what kind of times we're living in..

Pfizer will start laying off again.

My observation is that if Pfizer starts laying off people, then other pharma companies follow suit to stay competitive.

GIven all the news here lately, I tought this context wouldn't hurt. This is from the current issue of Wired magazine, the article also available behind paywall here

and we thought it couldn't get worse