Experienced chief executives know that brand equity can be a company's most valuable asset—one that rarely appears on the balance sheet. Companies build trust, credibility, and goodwill over decades through consistent performance.

Yet, as any CEO will attest, the strongest brands are seldom destroyed by competitors. More often, they are weakened by a company's own choices—decisions that erode the very qualities that made the brand successful in the first place.

The same principle applies to nations. 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 it still possesses 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, while approval of Chinese leadership rose from 32% to 36% over the same period. Among NATO allies, approval of U.S. leadership dropped 14 percentage points to 21%.

America's reputation, then, has clearly taken a hit. But the more important question is whether current U.S. policy choices are gradually eroding the sources of the influence that made the country powerful 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 world-class universities, deep financial markets, and leading research institutions. Together, these strengths have enabled the United States to attract exceptional people from around the world and give them the freedom to transform industries. The pattern predates Silicon Valley: in the 1930s, Albert Einstein and Enrico Fermi were among the European scientists who continued their careers in the United States, and postwar federal investment in research helped American institutions rise to the top of global science. Consider 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, the discipline's highest honor, presented every four years to mathematicians under 40, for breakthroughs in mathematics; both now teach at U.S. universities.

In short, the U.S. did not become powerful simply by being bigger. It became 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 that 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, and almost 60% were founded by an immigrant.

Recent policy developments, however, risk weakening that 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. The stakes are compounded because the legal pathways are already narrow: most foreign graduates who remain in the country do so through channels such as the Optional Practical Training program, which lets international students work in the U.S. after finishing their studies, and the H-1B visa for skilled workers.

New international student enrollment at U.S. colleges and universities fell 17% in fall 2025, according to the Institute of International Education—a sharp reversal after total international enrollment reached a record of more than one million students in 2023–24.

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 relentlessly for the world's best people, knowing 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 Francisco, or Austin, the result will be fewer U.S. startups, a weaker research ecosystem, and a narrower margin of technological leadership. Those alternatives are not hypothetical: the United Kingdom's Graduate Route allows foreign graduates to remain and work for two years after their studies, while Canada and Australia have long offered post-study work permits aimed at retaining graduates who might otherwise look to the United States. And once an ecosystem loses its magnetism, it can be hard to get back. Competitive decline rarely arrives as a dramatic collapse; more often, it unfolds 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. Strategic competition between the world's two largest economies will shape policy for years to come. The answer, however, should be targeted and selective rather than a blanket suspension.

It is true that some technologies are too sensitive to share—a principle Washington has already acted on with expanded export controls on advanced semiconductors and the equipment used to make them. 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, therefore, is not about choosing between security and openness, but about 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, strengthening their culture, research capabilities, and opportunities for innovation.

Nations—and the U.S. in particular—should think the same way.

The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of Fortune.

This article was originally published by Fortune.