President Donald Trump told reporters on Monday that H-1B migrant workers are currently needed because Americans don’t know how to make microchips.
Trump sat down with Fox News’s Laura Ingraham on Nov. 10 and the host pressed the president on his H-1B visa plan. The president argued that America needs to import more people because current citizens are not skilled or talented enough to do certain jobs. Trump was asked to expand and clarify his comments on Monday and told reporters that H1-B workers are needed to help make microchips as the industry moves back to the U.S.
“For instance, if you’re going to be making chips — we don’t make chips too much here anymore, but we are going to be in a period of a year, we’re going to have a big portion of the chip market. But we have to train our people how to make chips, because we didn’t get — we used to do it, and then foolishly, we lost that business to Taiwan, very, very foolishly, because if they had a president that thought like I did, they would not have let that happen,” Trump said. “But it’s all coming back. I think we’re going to have a, within a few years we’re going, and not because of the Chips Act.”
The president said the Chips Act was a disaster for America and gave billions of dollars away to other countries.
“Chip makers are all coming back, and I think within a very short period of time, we’re going to have maybe even the majority of the chip making in the world will be right in the United States, where it should have been all along,” the president added.
“But because we had people that didn’t believe in tariffs — if they believed in them, they didn’t know how to use them — we would have had nobody leaving our country right now, and instead, you have almost 100% of the chips are made in Taiwan. It’s so disgraceful. The good news is it’s all coming back,” he concluded.
The two men credited with creating the microchip, Jack Kilby and Robert Noyce, were both American and worked for American companies.
Since Trump’s initial comments on the H1-B visas, the president has faced blowback from his base. Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, an old rival of the president, has appeared to try and capitalize on the criticism.
“Republicans have a majority in Congress and could legislate elimination of H1B (and any programs designed to import cheap foreign labor). Deeds, not words, are what matter,” DeSantis wrote Nov. 13 in response to a tweet from a long-time ally of his criticizing Congress for not acting faster on H1-B visas. (RELATED: EXCLUSIVE: Trump, DeSantis Could Be Destined For Head-To-Head Rematch In Key GOP Primary)
Republican Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green, who has been clashing with the president recently, announced Nov. 13 on X that she is announcing a bill to phase out the H1-B visa program.
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