President Donald Trump recently announced that America will take in 600,000 Chinese foreign students, outraging much of MAGA. While the White House has clarified this is a continuation of existing policy, the move appears anathema to the spirit of America First, and prominent commentators criticized the president for suggesting it.
Fox News host Laura Ingraham, a vocal Trump supporter, grilled Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick on the matter on her show this week.
“Mr. Secretary, with all due respect, how is allowing 600,000 students from the communist country of China putting America first?” she asked Lutnick.
The cabinet secretary offered a curious defense of the proposal: It’s necessary to save American universities. “Well, the president’s point of view is that what would happen if you didn’t have those 600,000 students is that you’d empty them from the top, all the students would go up to better schools, and the bottom 15 percent of universities and colleges would go out of business in America,” Lutnick replied. “So, his view is he’s taking a rational economic view, which is classic Donald Trump.”
This argument makes the case for Chinese students worse. The Trump administration has been eager to tell American kids to not go to college and instead work in factories or go to trade school. That may be good advice for some Americans—but it looks terrible when you advocate for foreigners to take up the prime spots at elite universities. The implication is that Americans, but not foreign guests, are only supposed to go to the non-elite schools or forego college altogether.
Moreover, this pro-Chinese student argument undermines Trump’s war with the universities and his attempts to stifle foreign subversion. It makes no sense to try saving the current university system in its corrupt state, much less to import more foreigners to fulfill that aim.
The sudden change of heart about universities is odd. The administration has tried to cut funding to higher education, claiming colleges are too beholden to DEI and wokeness to deserve taxpayer dollars. The administration has reduced the number of foreign student visas, particularly those handed out to China. Trump himself has claimed these students can pose national security risks through espionage and other means. A number of foreign students have been implicated in spying for the Chinese Communist Party.
If universities are at risk of collapse and this would devastate our economy, wouldn’t it make sense for our nation’s top universities to focus more on recruiting Americans? It’s strange for Lutnick to ignore this possible solution and to treat a lack of Chinese students as an inevitable nightmare.
While the commerce secretary now feels frightened about what might happen to American colleges, he struck a different tone when defending the president’s tariffs back in the spring. Lutnick said we needed to push Americans in white-collar work into manufacturing jobs. “It’s time to train people not to do the jobs of the past, but to do the great jobs of the future,” Lutnick told CNBC last May. “This is the new model, where you work in these plants for the rest of your life, and your kids work here, and your grandkids work here.”
He’s not an outlier in this messaging. Administration officials and conservative pundits regularly make such appeals. The Department of Labor’s X account recently asserted that trade school grads make more money than college grads. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt declared in May: “Electricians, plumbers—we need more of those in our country, and less LGBTQ graduate majors from Harvard University.” Elon Musk regularly touts the superiority of going into trades rather than college (while also claiming we need college-educated migrants to fill jobs in the tech industry).
Consistency is needed here. If the administration sees universities as the enemy and a college degree as over-valued, it shouldn’t trouble itself with the number of campuses that disappear. It should instead encourage more young people to follow the trade school path promoted by the White House. It should also be happy to reduce the demand for foreign students and ensure we have fewer Chinese spies in the U.S. These moves would serve the Trump administration’s agenda.
However, the administration’s line casts its main message aside for the worst kind of inconsistency. It tells Americans one thing and foreigners another: As a young American, you’re only supposed to do blue-collar work—regardless of your interests and aptitudes—while elite schools and white-collar jobs are for foreigners. That’s not the intended message, of course. But it’s easy to think it is when the administration can’t maintain a consistent line.
Trump’s reasoning for supporting the Chinese visas is tied with trade negotiations. China demands that America continue to allow its citizens to study in the country. The president may think it’s necessary for any tariff agreement to keep this arrangement. He’s also likely hearing from college lobbyists who want their foreign cash cows to continue paying full tuition. Advisers may tell him it could cause some serious economic pain if university admissions continue to plunge.
But it’s not compelling to tell the American public “we’re allowing in Chinese foreign students as part of trade negotiations.” Officials probably think it’s better to pitch it instead as a necessity for American universities—despite conservatives’ hostility towards these institutions.
While it may be understandable for the president to stick up for Chinese foreign students, it’s still wrong. It would be much better for America to curb the Middle Kingdom’s foreign visas and let several colleges shut down. It may cause some short-term economic pain, but the long-term gains would make up for it. Many problems with American higher education would be solved. There is too much bloat, too many degrees, and too much nonsense within the Ivory Tower. A significant downsizing of the market would improve the situation and weaken one of the left’s chief institutions.
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Chinese foreign students exploit our generosity for the benefit of a hostile power. There is no reason we should train their elite, helping make China the dominant global power. If given the choice between a trade deal or a restriction on foreign student visas, the restriction is better for the national interest.
The Trump administration has made tremendous strides in curtailing illegal immigration, DEI, and other harmful liberal programs. The second term has greatly exceeded the accomplishments of the first—and there are still three more years to go.
But no president is perfect, and Trump is bound to make mistakes. The support for Chinese foreign students is one of them. Thankfully, there is still time for the administration to do the right thing, listen to the MAGA base, and reverse this terrible policy. We can’t make America great again if we indulge higher education’s Chinese addiction.
