President Donald Trump, on Monday, defended his support for H-1B visa holders while arguing that the U.S. no longer has enough workers with the expertise needed to revive domestic semiconductor manufacturing.
Trump said the U.S. had “foolishly” allowed its chipmaking capability to move overseas and now lacks the workforce to rebuild it. “For instance, if you’re going to be making chips, we don’t make chips too much here anymore,” he told reporters. “But we have to train our people how to make chips because we didn’t do it. We used to do it and then, foolishly, we lost that business to Taiwan," he said.
The US President, who was speaking during a White House presser late Monday evening, also insisted the industry is poised for a turnaround.
“We’re going to have a big portion of the chip market,” he said, predicting a rebound “within a few years.” He argued that his tariff policy, not federal subsidies, is driving that shift.
“Because of tariffs, the chips are coming back. Chipmakers are all coming back,” Trump noted. “Within a very short period of time, we’re going to have the majority of the chipmaking in the world… where it should have been all along," he further remarked.
Furthermore, Trump renewed his attack on the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act, signed by former President Joe Biden. “The CHIPS Act was a disaster for this country,” he said. “We gave away billions of dollars to other countries and other locations… All they did was rob our money.”
He added that earlier administrations failed to use trade tools to keep manufacturing in the U.S. properly.
“We had people that didn’t believe in tariffs and didn’t know how to use them,” Trump stated, further adding, “We would have had nobody leaving our country right now. Instead, almost 100% of the chips are made in Taiwan".
Notably, Trump’s position on H-1B visas has faced pushback from within his own party.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, responding to conservative criticism of the visa program, wrote on November 13, “Republicans have a majority in Congress and could legislate elimination of H1B… Deeds, not words, are what matter.”
Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, the same day, announced legislation aimed at phasing out the H-1B program entirely.
The Commerce Department currently oversees the $52.7 billion CHIPS Act, which has so far directed funding toward research and the reshoring of semiconductor capacity.
Since taking office in January, Trump has moved to renegotiate parts of the law, calling it “a horrible, horrible thing” and criticizing it as a corporate giveaway. His administration is also exploring using CHIPS Act funding to take equity stakes in Intel and other manufacturers in exchange for grants, Reuters had reported early this August.
Despite the controversy, Trump said he remains confident about the U.S. semiconductor revival. “The good news is it’s all coming back,” he said. “It should have been here all along.”
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