The Trump administration just made it $100,000 harder to bring talent into the United States. From now on, employers must pay a one-time $100,000 surcharge when they file an H-1B petition—the visa program companies use to hire skilled foreign workers. The impacts of this decision are already rippling through global labor markets. The administration says the fee will “protect American jobs.” In reality, it will kneecap the very industries the US says it wants to lead.
A few days earlier, the president took to Truth Social to urge foreign firms investing in the US to “bring their experts to train American workers.” The logic there is sound: if the US wants to produce advanced products that are not currently made in America—things like semiconductors, batteries, electric vehicles—it must first acquire the know-how to do so. But knowledge doesn’t cross borders on its own. It moves with people. And now, the administration is taxing precisely those people out of reach.
This is not an abstract idea. I’ve studied how know-how travels. Entire industries have been built by migrants who moved across borders carrying not just skills, but productive knowledge. In 1978, for example, the Korean firm Daewoo trained 130 Bangladeshi workers and managers. When they returned home, they launched what would become Bangladesh’s garment industry—which now employs over four million people. Something similar happened across Central and Eastern Europe after the fall of the Iron Curtain, when Yugoslav refugees who had spent years in Germany’s car factories returned with deep operational knowledge. They didn’t just know how to operate machinery—they understood production routines, supplier coordination, and quality control. Their expertise helped seed a web of regional supply chains that still fuel European car manufacturing today.
If the president wants US firms to build the goods America currently has to source from elsewhere on its own soil, it must allow them to import that same kind of expertise. Higher productivity—the only real path to making “Made in the USA” a reality—requires not just capital investment but embedded technical knowledge. And in almost every case, that knowledge lives inside people.
But here lies the contradiction. While the president is calling for those experts to come and train Americans, his administration is simultaneously making it harder and more expensive for them to do so. A $100,000 visa fee is not just a bureaucratic cost—it’s a signal. It tells global talent: “You are not welcome here.” It tells firms: “Hire abroad because the skills don’t exist here right now.” It tells investors: “Prepare for delays, inefficiencies, and enforcement headaches.”
Not only is it becoming much more expensive to attract foreign talent, it is also becoming dangerous, as experienced by the hundreds of South Korean workers in the Hyundai–LG battery plant construction site in Georgia raided by the authorities a few weeks ago. Among these workers were people whose expertise could have helped Americans build and operate advanced industrial equipment. Instead, they were treated as violators.
The need for talent goes far beyond manufacturing. The same bottlenecks exist in services—especially in artificial intelligence. At one end of the spectrum, maintaining massive data centers requires electricians, welders, and trade workers—occupations where workers are already in short supply. At the other, building foundational AI models requires PhDs, engineers, and research scientists, many of whom are trained abroad. As Microsoft’s President Brad Smith recently warned, the AI economy cannot scale without expanding the pipeline of both physical and human infrastructure. Yet the White House’s own “AI Action Plan,” released just weeks ago, barely mentions migration.
For years, Congress has kept the H-1B program capped far below the level of demand. Now, the Trump administration’s new fee risks flipping the script—from an abundance of global talent eager to contribute to the US economy, to a system that actively discourages them from even trying. This doesn’t just threaten the ability of the US to compete globally. It undermines a key purpose of the MAGA movement: reviving domestic industry.
You can’t rebuild an industrial base without rebuilding the pipeline of knowledge. You can’t train American workers if you drive out the trainers. And you certainly can’t lead in advanced sectors if you penalize the entry of those who already know how to build them.
This policy may score political points in the short term. But its long-term effects will be felt in empty factories, stalled projects, and a workforce cut off from the very knowledge it needs to thrive. If “America First” means anything in economic terms, it must start with a sober understanding: to make things here, we need people from there.
