The White House’s Bizarre Defense of Chinese Foreign Students
Colleges would shut down without more foreigners? That’s a win-win.
Scott Greer
Aug 29, 2025 12:05 AM
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.
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https://www.theamericanconservative.com/the-white-houses-bizarre-defense-of-chinese-foreign-students/
