Trump Says H-1B Workers Needed Because Americans Don’t Know How to Make Microchips
President Donald Trump said Monday that H-1B migrant workers are essential for the U.S. because Americans currently lack the skills to produce microchips, a key industry he says is returning to the country after decades overseas.
Speaking to reporters following a Nov. 10 interview with Fox News host Laura Ingraham, Trump emphasized that while the U.S. once led the world in chip manufacturing, much of the industry was lost to Taiwan due to poor policy decisions.
“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,” Trump said. “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… But it’s all coming back.”
Trump criticized the CHIPS Act, which he argued gave billions of dollars to foreign countries rather than bolstering domestic production. “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 right in the United States, where it should have been all along,” he said.
Despite asserting that the industry is returning, Trump stressed the need for H-1B visa workers to fill the gap, saying Americans currently do not possess the required expertise. “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 made in Taiwan. It’s so disgraceful. The good news is it’s all coming back,” he added.
The president’s comments on H-1B visas have drawn criticism from some in his political base. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, a rival for the 2024 Republican nomination, seized on the remarks to call for legislative action. “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 in a Nov. 13 response to a tweet criticizing Congress for not moving faster on H-1B reform.
Photo credit: Gage Skidmore via Flickr
