Foreigners should train Americans & leave: Bessent on Trump H-1B plan

A day after US President Donald Trump defended the H-1B visa programme, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the “vision” was to bring in skilled overseas workers who would train Americans and then go back home.

“The President’s vision here is to bring in overseas workers, where these jobs went, who have the skills. Three, five, seven years to train the US workers, then they can go home. The US workers fully take over,” Bessent said in an interview on Wednesday.

Bessent was asked about Trump’s latest remarks on the H-1B visa programme, where the President said America had to bring in talent since it did not have “certain talents”.

He said for 20-30 years, the US had offshored precision manufacturing jobs. “And the President’s point here is, again, we can’t snap our fingers and say, ‘You’re going to learn how to build ships overnight’. We want to bring the semiconductor industry back to the US.”

“So, this idea of overseas partners coming in, teaching American workers, then returning home, that’s a home run,” Bessent said, adding that Americans could not have those jobs now because they had not built ships in the US for years, and they had not built semiconductors. Trump defended the H-1B visa programme, saying America had to bring in talent from around the world. “I agree, but you also do have to bring in talent,” Trump had said. He was responding to a question on whether the H-1B visa issue would not be a big priority for his administration, and if one wanted to raise wages for American workers, the country could not be flooded with hundreds of thousands of foreign workers.

Trump said “You don’t have certain talents. And people have to learn. You can’t take people off an unemployment line, and say, ‘I’m going to put you into a factory, we’re going to make missiles’,” Trump had said.