Trump Floats Lead Trial Balloon, Says US May Accept 600,000 Chinese Students Into Universities

During an Oval Office press conference yesterday, President Trump told reporters that the United States is prepared to accept 600,000 Chinese students as part of his ongoing trade negotiations with Beijing.

“We’re going to allow their students to come in. It’s very important, 600,000 students. It’s very important. But we’re going to get along with China,” he said. “But it’s a different relationship that we have now with China. It’s a much relationship economically than it was before with Biden.”

For comparison, from 2023-2024 approximately 277,000 Chinese students were enrolled in American universities from a high of 372,000 students in the 2019-2020 academic year.

Following his announcement, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told Fox News Host Laura Ingraham that the “bottom 15% of universities would go out of business in America.” When pressed by Ingraham who asked, “How is this America First?”, Lutnick pivoted to H1-B visas.

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Needless to say, many of Trump’s supporters and Republican colleagues lit up X (formerly Twitter) like a Chinese lantern.

Republican Senator Mike Lee from Utah responded, “We have enough Marxists. No more please.”

Investigative journalist Laura Loomer expectedly took a more pointed approach, asking, “Now that we are importing 600,000 CCP spies, what’s the point of American students going into STEM? Adding, “China murdered 1.2 million Americans with a bio weapon. Send us reparations. Not CCP spies.”

Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene also disagreed with Trump, noting that failing schools should be allowed to fail and offered trade schools as an alternative:

“We should not let in 600,000 CHINESE students to attend American colleges and universities that may be loyal to the CCP.

If refusing to allow these Chinese students to attend our schools causes 15% of them to fail then these schools should fail anyways because they are being propped up by the CCP.

Why are we allowing 600,000 students from China to replace our American student’s opportunities?

We should never allow that.

Trade schools are a GREAT alternative and produce the essential education and training for the most needed jobs in America with very high starting pay.”

President Trump’s statement is a reversal from Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s commitment to begin “revoking visas of Chinese students, including those with connections to the Chinese Communist Party or studying in critical fields” by working with the Department of Homeland Security to assist in his efforts.

President Trump is known for his bold statements and actions and politicians often float trial balloons to gauge reactions from the public. China has even floated a balloon of their own. In 2023, the Communist Chinese government floated a spy balloon over North American Airspace that was shot down by the U.S. military to protect U.S. intelligence.

Although it remains unknown if the president will commit to doubling the number of Chinese students within American universities, the president’s proposal has been shot down by his most ardent supporters.