New Delhi, March 20 -- America's prodigious wealth and power are founded on two pillars: universities and businesses. The first produces the ideas, research and training that have made the country a Mecca for the world's best minds. The second generates the investment and innovation that have powered America's formidable economic engine. But now, President Donald Trump seems intent on wrecking both.

Trump's behaviour is no surprise. His economic-policy ideas have always been wacky, and his apparent hatred for elite academic institutions, which he views as the home of 'woke' culture, is well known. What's more shocking is that corporate and academic leaders have made barely a peep.

After Trump's election victory last November, there was ...