Latest / Trumponomics / Who Loses—and Maybe Wins—From Trump’s New H-1B Fee

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Who Loses—and Maybe Wins—From Trump’s New H-1B Fee · Trumponomics

0:00
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
0:08
Speaker 2: Everyone's going to be happy, and we're going to be
0:10
Speaker 2: able to keep people.
0:11
Speaker 3: In our country that are going to be very productive people,
0:14
Speaker 3: and in many cases these companies are going to pay
0:16
Speaker 3: a lot of money for that. I'm Stephanie Flanders, head
0:28
Speaker 3: of Government and Economics at Bloomberg, and welcome to Trumponomics,
0:32
Speaker 3: the podcast that looks at the economic world of Donald Trump,
0:35
Speaker 3: how he's already shaped the global economy, and what on
0:38
Speaker 3: earth is going to happen next. Well. Over the weekend,
0:41
Speaker 3: Donald Trump surprised the world by placing one hundred thousand
0:45
Speaker 3: dollars fee on the cost of an H one B
0:49
Speaker 3: visa for new employees entering the US. The short term
0:53
Speaker 3: result was travel chaos. Thousands of skilled employees working in
0:57
Speaker 3: the US on an H one B who happened to
0:59
Speaker 3: be traveling abroad were told to get back on US
1:01
Speaker 3: soil by midnight Sunday just to make sure they weren't stranded.
1:05
Speaker 4: Now.
1:06
Speaker 3: Eventually, the White House Press Secretary cleared up the confusion.
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Speaker 3: The fee would only apply to new applicants, but that
1:12
Speaker 3: still left a big question hanging over the US tech
1:15
Speaker 3: companies who depend on these skilled workers and those visas
1:19
Speaker 3: to keep America at the forefront of global tech innovation,
1:23
Speaker 3: and with India accounting for seventy percent of them, it
1:26
Speaker 3: also causes a massive headache for the Indian software companies
1:29
Speaker 3: who are a big part of Indian Prime Minister Mody's
1:32
Speaker 3: growth strategy for the country. So that leads us to
1:35
Speaker 3: a big, quite complicated question about that one policy. Who
1:41
Speaker 3: gains and who loses from President Trump putting a big
1:44
Speaker 3: price tag on skilled foreign talent working in the US.
1:50
Speaker 3: Of course, it's not just the H one B change.
1:52
Speaker 3: A few weeks ago we saw another example of a
1:54
Speaker 3: business getting caught in the crosshairs of an America first
1:57
Speaker 3: immigration policy with that ice raid a Hyundai plant in Georgia.
2:02
Speaker 3: So do expensive visas and raids like that one actively
2:06
Speaker 3: undermine the Trump administration's effort to attract foreign investment and
2:09
Speaker 3: in the end, could they actually be good news for
2:11
Speaker 3: countries and companies outside the US, including maybe India, who
2:15
Speaker 3: can offer those skilled workers an alternative home. Well, we
2:20
Speaker 3: have a lot of strands to unpit here and I'm
2:22
Speaker 3: delighted that we can talk about both sides of this
2:25
Speaker 3: policy today with Michael Deng geoeconomics technology analyst at Bloomberg
2:29
Speaker 3: Economics sitting in Washington today. And Chetna Kumar are geoeconomics
2:34
Speaker 3: analyst for South Asia who's joining us from New Delhi.
2:37
Speaker 3: And I should say, I'm sitting in New York and
2:39
Speaker 3: it's Tuesday morning, US time, But I think it's probably
2:48
Speaker 3: useful to start with some context on how important this
2:52
Speaker 3: visa has become for the US and indeed its relevance
2:56
Speaker 3: to India. So Michael just sort of talk us through
2:59
Speaker 3: the kind of companies that have relied on this visa
3:02
Speaker 3: and how important they are to America's tech industry.
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Speaker 1: I think primarily most of the companies that have been
3:09
Speaker 1: using H one b's, I would say probably two thirds
3:11
Speaker 1: are the software and IT sectors. So you have the
3:14
Speaker 1: IT contracting and service companies Tata, Infosits, etc. But you
3:17
Speaker 1: also have Big Tech to a significant degree, relying on
3:20
Speaker 1: these H one b's to bring in software talent from overseas.
3:23
Speaker 1: These companies are going to be the ones most directly
3:26
Speaker 1: hit by this H one B fee change for IT
3:29
Speaker 1: services specifically, the impact is going to be greater just
3:31
Speaker 1: because it hits their business model directly. Big Tech in
3:34
Speaker 1: terms of software may be more capable of absorbing that hit.
3:37
Speaker 1: But outside of these directly computer related industries, there's also adjacent,
3:42
Speaker 1: smaller but also critical industries like semiconductors, for example, which
3:47
Speaker 1: don't necessarily need to bring in a huge bulk of
3:49
Speaker 1: foreign talent, but they do need to bring in a
3:52
Speaker 1: smaller group of highly specialized engineers to support their design,
3:57
Speaker 1: equipment and materials, manufacturing initiatives, etc. Which all kind of
4:01
Speaker 1: coincide with this huge restoring push that's going on in
4:03
Speaker 1: the US. So across the board, you're seeing software and
4:07
Speaker 1: it computer related occupations being hit hard first, but then
4:11
Speaker 1: a lot of other more niche industries that need foreign
4:14
Speaker 1: talent to support their own growth into the future also
4:17
Speaker 1: being impacted.
4:19
Speaker 3: The broad response that the administration might have, and I've
4:23
Speaker 3: heard even in the last few days, is these are
4:26
Speaker 3: easy ways for US tech companies to bring in cheaper
4:31
Speaker 3: foreign workers rather than pay American skilled workers, and it's
4:37
Speaker 3: undercutting American skilled workers, and that's what they're trying to
4:40
Speaker 3: prevent with this by putting this one hundred thousand dollars
4:42
Speaker 3: wedge in there.
4:44
Speaker 1: I do think that's true to some degree. We've started
4:47
Speaker 1: to see the market for especially junior entry level computer
4:51
Speaker 1: science software developers get a little soft. Recently, the stat
4:55
Speaker 1: for recent graduates who are majoring in computer science and
4:58
Speaker 1: the unemployment rate is around six percent, as one of
5:00
Speaker 1: the highest in the US currently. So I think specifically
5:03
Speaker 1: for that segment and this computer industry that this H
5:06
Speaker 1: one B policy is targeting, it is true to an extent.
5:10
Speaker 1: I think this could help that segment specifically. The fear
5:12
Speaker 1: is that this kind of blunt change also pulls in
5:16
Speaker 1: a lot of the other strategic industries that don't rely
5:18
Speaker 1: on this model of labor to support their workforce, and
5:20
Speaker 1: that they need the more highly specialized workforce that the
5:23
Speaker 1: H ANDEB is supposed to fulfill, and one hundred thousand
5:26
Speaker 1: is quite a big barrier in many cases they do
5:29
Speaker 1: require specialized talent, but that fee may be too big
5:32
Speaker 1: of a barrier in terms of bringing in foreign talent,
5:35
Speaker 1: and you could inadvertently harm US tech ambitions in the
5:37
Speaker 1: long run as well.
5:39
Speaker 3: I was struct that Read Hastings, the co founder of
5:41
Speaker 3: Netflix and certainly no great supporter of Donald Trump. He's
5:44
Speaker 3: been a sort of prominent back of the Democrats in
5:46
Speaker 3: recent years. He came out saying he thought this was
5:49
Speaker 3: a good idea this hundred thousand dollar fee for some
5:51
Speaker 3: of the reasons that you just suggested. But we can
5:54
Speaker 3: get into whether there might be exemptions and whether there's
5:58
Speaker 3: a way in which this could be more targeted in
6:00
Speaker 3: a second. But I wanted to get to you because
6:03
Speaker 3: my impression from reading some of the coverage was that
6:05
Speaker 3: there was really a lot of concern around this over
6:08
Speaker 3: the weekend, and it's still raising questions about a big
6:11
Speaker 3: chunk of Indian industry.
6:13
Speaker 4: That's right, Stephanie. The one hundred thousand dollars fee impacts
6:17
Speaker 4: primarily Indian tech workers and Indian tech companies in the US,
6:22
Speaker 4: because we know seventy percent of the H and B
6:23
Speaker 4: talent comes from India, but traditionally it was Indian tech
6:26
Speaker 4: companies the Data Cognizant emphasis which have been the greatest
6:30
Speaker 4: beneficiaries of the H and D program, and their business
6:33
Speaker 4: model relies on being able to hire these Indian tech
6:35
Speaker 4: workers and bringing them to the US to service on
6:38
Speaker 4: site contracts. So not being able to hire modified workforce
6:42
Speaker 4: is going to dent their pricing how they're able to
6:44
Speaker 4: offer services, and we've seen some of that impact show
6:47
Speaker 4: up in Indian stock prices and ID stock prices over
6:50
Speaker 4: the weekend and over this week particularly because of that.
6:53
Speaker 4: I think the second concern is broader about US and
6:56
Speaker 4: your relations and what this means for the broader trajectory
6:58
Speaker 4: of the relationship. I think we can and ignore the
7:00
Speaker 4: context within which this is happening. Tariffs on India have
7:04
Speaker 4: been doubled to fifty percent. There have been some other
7:06
Speaker 4: moves by the US administration attacking India, including provoking exemption
7:10
Speaker 4: leavers for India's investments in the Iranian pot of Chapahar
7:13
Speaker 4: and others, which make it seem like President Trump is
7:16
Speaker 4: tightening the squeeze on India.
7:18
Speaker 2: Quite a bit.
7:19
Speaker 4: There was a notion that perhaps India could withstand the
7:22
Speaker 4: fifty percent tariffs and a whole firm because it wasn't
7:25
Speaker 4: really a goods manufacturing goods exporting countries.
7:28
Speaker 2: But targeting services is really the engine of India's economy.
7:31
Speaker 4: So for scale, India exports about two hundred billion dollars
7:36
Speaker 4: worth of ID services every year, and about one hundred
7:38
Speaker 4: billion of that goes to the US, So targeting H
7:41
Speaker 4: and B workers is sort of seen as a strike
7:43
Speaker 4: on that entire industry.
7:45
Speaker 3: You know, when people think of Indian outsourcing we think
7:47
Speaker 3: of inevitably, we think of call centers. I know they've
7:51
Speaker 3: developed a lot since the early days of call centers,
7:53
Speaker 3: and there's lots of other services that these companies are providing.
7:56
Speaker 3: But this particular policies, if it's about people all coming
8:00
Speaker 3: to the States, why are they affected. You're just talking
8:02
Speaker 3: about the people who are helping coordinate on the ground
8:05
Speaker 3: in the US.
8:07
Speaker 4: So that's about three hundred thousand Indian H ONEB workers
8:11
Speaker 4: in the US currently, and that's about a tenth of
8:14
Speaker 4: the total Indian diaspora.
8:16
Speaker 3: That's a tenth of the diaspora in America.
8:20
Speaker 2: In the US, that's right.
8:21
Speaker 4: These Indian companies have relied initially because of the cost
8:25
Speaker 4: arbitrage of being able to hire Indian workers and bring
8:28
Speaker 4: them to the US. But there's also some advantages culturally
8:31
Speaker 4: and being able to efficiencies to being able to bring
8:34
Speaker 4: workers from India to service. A lot of the consulting
8:37
Speaker 4: and it contracts on site, and many of these contracts
8:39
Speaker 4: do require the service provider to be on site. And
8:43
Speaker 4: that's why you see the surge of sort of Indian
8:45
Speaker 4: workers in the US. It's not as much of a
8:47
Speaker 4: rude shock as it seems because Indian companies have been
8:51
Speaker 4: preparing and have been expecting the change of policy. Now
8:54
Speaker 4: for a while, President Trump did try to ban the
8:57
Speaker 4: H one D program in its first administration.
9:00
Speaker 2: I was not successful.
9:01
Speaker 4: But since then, of the last ten years, we've sort
9:03
Speaker 4: of seen Indian companies actually scale back their alliance on
9:06
Speaker 4: H one D visas for workers in the US. They're
9:08
Speaker 4: about thirty percent of the last decade, which is a
9:11
Speaker 4: sizeable reduction. And at the same time, we've seen actually
9:13
Speaker 4: US tech companies rely more on the Indian workforce in
9:17
Speaker 4: Indian deck workers like the Meta, Google, Netflix, et cetera,
9:20
Speaker 4: to sort of bridge their own skills gaps. So we've
9:23
Speaker 4: seen a little bit of the shift happened in the
9:24
Speaker 4: last ten years of US companies increasing their alliance on
9:27
Speaker 4: EAH one.
9:27
Speaker 3: D's Okay, now, Michael, given that a lot of things
9:31
Speaker 3: that come out of the administration, shall we say, don't
9:34
Speaker 3: turn out to be kind of hard and fast, is
9:38
Speaker 3: there a perception that there could be quite a lot
9:40
Speaker 3: of holes in this Do you see that as being
9:42
Speaker 3: the first reaction of US companies to just see if
9:44
Speaker 3: they can get an exemption. We've certainly seen a lot
9:47
Speaker 3: of companies looking for exemptions in tariffs, for example.
9:50
Speaker 1: Yes, I think in the absence of clear criteria and timelines,
9:54
Speaker 1: the first instinct for a lot of companies, I would argue,
9:56
Speaker 1: with the exception of maybe the IT consulting services companies
9:59
Speaker 1: because they were cifically targeted in the proclamation. But any
10:03
Speaker 1: other company like tangentially tech Related, STEM related is certainly
10:07
Speaker 1: going to press for an exemption first because that circumvents
10:10
Speaker 1: the entire issue for them, and I think in critical
10:12
Speaker 1: strategic industries like semiconductors, AI infrastructure, that's probably not going
10:17
Speaker 1: to be an issue for them. The key is whether
10:19
Speaker 1: this administration, at least in these critical technology ecosystems, understands
10:23
Speaker 1: the full scope of industries and companies that would need
10:26
Speaker 1: to be exempted, and do the understand all the labor
10:29
Speaker 1: dynamics and the workforce shortages that affect all the supporting
10:32
Speaker 1: industries that aren't just the headline flagship firms. Certainly, I
10:35
Speaker 1: don't think they're going to miss like an Nvidia or
10:37
Speaker 1: an open AI for example, But a lot of smaller companies, suppliers, etc.
10:42
Speaker 1: Also face workforce issues, and this gets into another issue
10:45
Speaker 1: that's persisted over the past decade, and that many of
10:47
Speaker 1: these non software STEM industries have traditionally had trouble attracting
10:52
Speaker 1: domestic US graduates because they've all gone to software, and
10:55
Speaker 1: so that foreign talent pipeline has been the way that
10:58
Speaker 1: they've kept their workforce sufficient.
11:00
Speaker 3: And what kind of job would that be?
11:02
Speaker 1: So specialist engineers in terms of chip design, chip manufacturing,
11:05
Speaker 1: for example, I'm using semiconductors because I'm more familiar with
11:08
Speaker 1: the industry.
11:09
Speaker 3: Why would you not attract American workers into that sector.
11:11
Speaker 3: It seems like that would be just as attractive as
11:13
Speaker 3: some of the other sort of STEM sectors.
11:15
Speaker 1: Mainly because software is so much more attractive in terms
11:18
Speaker 1: of the lifestyle and the salaries. And so there's that
11:22
Speaker 1: gap there that was best filled for a while in
11:24
Speaker 1: many cases by foreign researchers and foreign graduates. And I
11:27
Speaker 1: think the stat even for semiconductor related fields is greater
11:30
Speaker 1: than fifty or sixty percent of researchers all come from
11:33
Speaker 1: outside of the US, and so cutting off that pipeline
11:36
Speaker 1: right now would be pretty harmful for US tech competitiveness
11:40
Speaker 1: in these leading industries that really reply on a smaller
11:43
Speaker 1: pool of specialized labor, and.
11:45
Speaker 3: Just as as obvious question. If there is such scarcity,
11:48
Speaker 3: can't they just pay the one hundred thousand dollars The
11:50
Speaker 3: assumption of the US this administration has been in quite
11:53
Speaker 3: a lot of areas that the rest of the world
11:55
Speaker 3: is willing to pay up for access to the US
11:58
Speaker 3: in whatever form.
12:00
Speaker 1: I do think for certain industries they probably are okay
12:04
Speaker 1: with paying it. Unfortunately, those industries also happen to be
12:07
Speaker 1: the flagship firms and industries that are probably most likely
12:09
Speaker 1: going to get an exemption, like big tech companies are
12:13
Speaker 1: not going to have that much of an issue paying
12:14
Speaker 1: one hundred thousand barrier if they really need the talent
12:17
Speaker 1: they require.
12:17
Speaker 3: But they could just go and have dinner with Donald
12:19
Speaker 3: Trump again and maybe sort it out.
12:21
Speaker 1: Yes, Yes, and same thing for the headlining semiconductor firms
12:24
Speaker 1: for example. But if you dive down more into semiconductor manufacturing,
12:29
Speaker 1: when we're trying to reshore US fabs at a time
12:31
Speaker 1: when there's already a pretty significant cost delta with Asia fabs,
12:35
Speaker 1: adding one hundred thousand dollars barriers to the sort of
12:38
Speaker 1: core engineers you need to ramp up capacity in US
12:40
Speaker 1: fabs is not very beneficial to reshoring and it's sort
12:45
Speaker 1: of this layer underneath, this middle core of engineering talent
12:49
Speaker 1: in the US is going to be most affected by
12:50
Speaker 1: this barrier.
12:51
Speaker 3: I love the phrase that the cost delta with Asia FABS,
12:54
Speaker 3: but I guess we should sort of spell out that's
12:56
Speaker 3: just the fact that Asian companies producing chips are cheaper
13:00
Speaker 3: and US ones. Yes, yes, yes, but we can stick
13:03
Speaker 3: with FABS. I mean, just sort of teasing out the
13:05
Speaker 3: implications of what Michael was saying. It suggests that in
13:09
Speaker 3: these kind of high tech areas where the US has
13:14
Speaker 3: kind of significant ambitions, it seems like either they'll pay
13:18
Speaker 3: the US companies to get this talent or they will
13:21
Speaker 3: get an exemption. And that leaves the IT services sector, which,
13:26
Speaker 3: as you've described, is something that has been very important
13:30
Speaker 3: to some of India's biggest companies in the last few years.
13:33
Speaker 3: So does this come down to more of a sort
13:35
Speaker 3: of underhand way to tax those Indian exports of services
13:41
Speaker 3: without saying upfront that that's what we're doing.
13:44
Speaker 4: Definitely is hard to see a what of motivating this administration,
13:47
Speaker 4: but it does seem like it's one of the ways
13:50
Speaker 4: to tipen the squeze on India. The fifty percentatus have
13:54
Speaker 4: not led to India keething on goods or stopping buying
13:57
Speaker 4: Russian oil. It's not let a big change. There's sort
14:00
Speaker 4: of policy and agricultural market access. So targeting India's IT services,
14:05
Speaker 4: it's best performing companies and bring a lot of revenue
14:08
Speaker 4: is possibly one way of President Trump indicating the US
14:12
Speaker 4: as pharm mow leverage over India than India has over
14:14
Speaker 4: the US. But what the impact of this is then,
14:17
Speaker 4: whether it will actually be your tax or not. I
14:19
Speaker 4: think it's going to play out over a long term,
14:21
Speaker 4: and I think immediately though, yes, there will be a
14:24
Speaker 4: margin squeeze for some of these Indian companies. They will
14:27
Speaker 4: have to shift and think rethink their business models and
14:30
Speaker 4: pricing strategies. There might actually be some structural advantages for India.
14:34
Speaker 4: India and President Trump actually might be doing India a
14:37
Speaker 4: good turn by sort of restricting H one B visas
14:40
Speaker 4: for these kinds of jobs and others. How So, to
14:43
Speaker 4: start with fewer H one B visas means there's opportunity
14:47
Speaker 4: for a lot of these investments to go back into
14:49
Speaker 4: jobs in India. We've seen over the last decade a
14:53
Speaker 4: boom in global capability centers, which is the newer kind
14:56
Speaker 4: of outsourcing that you were speaking to. These are not
14:59
Speaker 4: the BPOs of the nineteen nineties. They are more advanced
15:02
Speaker 4: captive centers that everybody from US banks like JP Morgan
15:07
Speaker 4: in Goldman Sachs to US companies and chip design companies
15:12
Speaker 4: have built and used in India and they provide everything
15:14
Speaker 4: from advanced chip designing, engineering, data analysis, and even product development.
15:20
Speaker 4: So what started as cost arbitrage in India sort of
15:23
Speaker 4: turning into value and innovation in India. And there's an
15:26
Speaker 4: expectation that because H and B pisas are going to
15:29
Speaker 4: become cost there, some of these jobs might find their
15:33
Speaker 4: way back to India and contribute to this booming GCC economy.
15:36
Speaker 3: There one observation that's been made about China over the years,
15:51
Speaker 3: and particularly in response to the first Trump term and
15:55
Speaker 3: the trade war with China then, was that the initial
15:59
Speaker 3: punishment also inspires a policy reaction within China. We've seen
16:04
Speaker 3: where there's a sort of greater determination to reduce reliance
16:08
Speaker 3: on the US, and now as we've come into the
16:11
Speaker 3: second Trump term, we've seen various ways in which China
16:15
Speaker 3: has kind of long prepared for this moment and has
16:18
Speaker 3: has ways of mitigating the effects of the very high tariffs.
16:23
Speaker 3: You know, wouldn't we say the same thing about India?
16:25
Speaker 3: And that's somewhat embedded in what you just said. But
16:28
Speaker 3: is there not a slightly different Moody growth strategy that
16:30
Speaker 3: comes out of this that is actually less beholden to
16:33
Speaker 3: the US.
16:34
Speaker 4: Possibly, And I think we're already seeing some of the
16:37
Speaker 4: signals that the Prime Minister is sending about improving india
16:40
Speaker 4: self alliance or people, or the government is seeing about
16:43
Speaker 4: wanting to support people who are losing h mend jobs
16:45
Speaker 4: coming back to India. But I do want to say
16:48
Speaker 4: the case with India is a little bit different than
16:49
Speaker 4: China in the sense that India's technology capabilities and India's
16:54
Speaker 4: tech industry is so complementary and deeply linked with the US.
16:58
Speaker 4: They're trying to unravel this relationship back hurts both for
17:01
Speaker 4: a considerable period of time. Yes, India is a big
17:04
Speaker 4: value exporter to the US, but not a big market
17:06
Speaker 4: for US firms. It's a big sort of place of
17:09
Speaker 4: operations for US companies, So I think unraveling this relationship
17:13
Speaker 4: is harder. And I think service is a little bit
17:16
Speaker 4: trickier than goods in terms of trying to replace and
17:18
Speaker 4: build talent pools and supply chains so quickly. Yes, and no,
17:21
Speaker 4: I think there's going to be a different growth strategy.
17:23
Speaker 4: And yes, India's exports are somewhat diversified, its services industries
17:26
Speaker 4: a lot more maturity. Its talent is wanted in other
17:30
Speaker 4: parts of the world, and there might be some sort
17:32
Speaker 4: of urgency in other countries trying to tap up Indian talent.
17:35
Speaker 4: But I think in the long run, there's enough drivers
17:37
Speaker 4: and complementalees between these two industries, and these two countries
17:40
Speaker 4: trying to break away may not be beneficial to either.
17:44
Speaker 3: Michael, I guess just pulling out on that very quickly.
17:46
Speaker 3: Apart from that longer term point, I mean, will other
17:48
Speaker 3: countries just take advantage of this?
17:50
Speaker 1: I think to a small degree, yes, And like we've
17:52
Speaker 1: seen small signals of the UK, Germany, Canada, for example,
17:57
Speaker 1: where skilled worker immigration isn't quite as let's say, arbitrary
18:01
Speaker 1: or difficult as the US that there's some science that
18:04
Speaker 1: small quantities may go there, But the US is really
18:06
Speaker 1: the core of this global tech talent migration. And whatever
18:10
Speaker 1: happens on the H one B side moving forward, how
18:13
Speaker 1: they decide the exemptions, what industries they work with or
18:16
Speaker 1: what industries they don't really will shape the flow of
18:19
Speaker 1: global talent.
18:20
Speaker 3: But I guess for those countries who worry about the
18:22
Speaker 3: brain drain of their most skilled talent, I heard Canadian
18:25
Speaker 3: Prime Minister Mark Carney talk about this earlier this week,
18:27
Speaker 3: that they have a large number of very highly trained
18:30
Speaker 3: people in advanced STEM courses in Canada and then a
18:34
Speaker 3: big chunk of them go to the US. It's going
18:36
Speaker 3: to be easier for these countries to hold on to
18:38
Speaker 3: their skilled talent.
18:39
Speaker 1: Yes, But I would say the reason for a lot
18:41
Speaker 1: of this brain drain is just the much higher compensation
18:43
Speaker 1: and benefits in the US in the first place, And
18:46
Speaker 1: so that doesn't fully go away even with this fee
18:49
Speaker 1: in place. If they're still hiring roughly the same amount
18:51
Speaker 1: of H one b's per year, it maybe shift in
18:54
Speaker 1: terms of the industry that they hire through, right, and
18:56
Speaker 1: so in terms of the overall quantity. If this H
18:59
Speaker 1: one B is properly executed, I don't see a huge
19:02
Speaker 1: shift happening to other countries, just in terms of the
19:05
Speaker 1: reasons why they come to the US in the first.
19:06
Speaker 3: Place, Okay, and just on the sort of longer term
19:10
Speaker 3: question and we faced this issue also in the sort
19:12
Speaker 3: of Bidenomics era, that there was a great desire in
19:16
Speaker 3: the administration for speed in building up US domestic industries
19:20
Speaker 3: in certain sectors, semiconductors being one, but also a big
19:24
Speaker 3: desire to have it all be home grown and be
19:27
Speaker 3: aware a vehicle for upgrading US born talent. And there's
19:32
Speaker 3: clearly a tension between those things. If you want to
19:36
Speaker 3: have it all the US workers, as one person said
19:38
Speaker 3: to me, well we could do that in five years.
19:39
Speaker 3: If you want to do it in one or two years,
19:41
Speaker 3: then there's going to be a lot of people will
19:42
Speaker 3: be bringing in from overseas. Has that tension increased in
19:46
Speaker 3: the second Trump administration.
19:48
Speaker 1: Yes, So above all else, what the domestic semiconductor and
19:53
Speaker 1: wider tech ecosystem needs is time to build up these
19:56
Speaker 1: workforce programs to get graduates and employees into the right
19:59
Speaker 1: industries firms. The Trump administration nominally has promised a lot
20:03
Speaker 1: of support for workforce issues, but some of their actions
20:06
Speaker 1: had a chilling effect on supporting these industries properly, the
20:10
Speaker 1: Kanda Ice Reid being one example, just in terms of
20:12
Speaker 1: making sure foreign talent can come in as a transition
20:15
Speaker 1: to patch that pipeline and tel domestic talent can come online.
20:19
Speaker 1: For the semiconductor space, specifically, what happened with what's known
20:22
Speaker 1: as GNATCAST or the NSTC, which was responsible for administering
20:26
Speaker 1: roughly seven to eight billion dollars in semi conductor research
20:29
Speaker 1: and development funding was also not great for workforce develment development.
20:33
Speaker 1: There was a sizable portion of that was aimed at
20:35
Speaker 1: further building out domestic workforce initiatives. So this sort of
20:39
Speaker 1: inconsistency at a time when we really want to accelerate
20:42
Speaker 1: this pace at getting the domestic workforce online is a
20:45
Speaker 1: little troubling.
20:46
Speaker 3: We started off asking about who the losers and who
20:48
Speaker 3: the gainers are. I think we've identified that the big
20:50
Speaker 3: loser is going to be integration, or at least the
20:53
Speaker 3: sort of the flow of workers from one country to another,
20:56
Speaker 3: and that Trump administration would say that's exactly the point
21:00
Speaker 3: that we're trying to have less of this kind of
21:03
Speaker 3: free flowing global labor market. But che, I mean people
21:08
Speaker 3: in India just reading this as an attack on Modi administration.
21:13
Speaker 4: I think President Trump has not been particularly friendly to
21:17
Speaker 4: any of his former partners and allies or US partners,
21:20
Speaker 4: so in one way, He's not treating India any differently.
21:24
Speaker 4: But I think the fall for India has been from
21:26
Speaker 4: such a great height that it's hard to ignore. I
21:28
Speaker 4: think this term sadden on the expectation of this relationship
21:31
Speaker 4: or mutual appreciation between these two leaders leading to less
21:35
Speaker 4: affrictions between them, or an early harbor, a straight deal
21:38
Speaker 4: even and that's not happened. And I think the fact
21:41
Speaker 4: that primis to more these shares this close relationship or
21:43
Speaker 4: did share this close relationship with President Trump is increasing
21:46
Speaker 4: the pressure on him. Certainly, the H one B visa
21:50
Speaker 4: sort of holders in India are a small but very
21:53
Speaker 4: visible and aspirational minority for the country. Getting this H
21:57
Speaker 4: and B job and moving to the US and eventually
21:59
Speaker 4: a pathway to green cord. We're seen as sort of
22:01
Speaker 4: a hallmarket success for many young Indian students, and I
22:05
Speaker 4: think that big impact. In addition to the very tough
22:08
Speaker 4: rhetoric that we've seen from President Trump calling the Indian
22:11
Speaker 4: economy dead, or his advisors calling the Ukraine war Modi's
22:15
Speaker 4: war or in your laundromat for Russia, I think, putting
22:18
Speaker 4: it all together, it's certainly added to the census that
22:21
Speaker 4: India is not a special partner of the US anymore,
22:23
Speaker 4: and it's not expecting to be treated any differently from
22:26
Speaker 4: other partners that have in the expectation that sort of
22:28
Speaker 4: its relationship between the leaders who sort of get in
22:31
Speaker 4: their better deal and sort of faded away.
22:33
Speaker 3: It's a reminder that you can put this one piece
22:37
Speaker 3: of grit, this charge in the wheels of the global economy,
22:41
Speaker 3: and it just tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of
22:45
Speaker 3: people and companies can be affected for quite a long
22:48
Speaker 3: time to come. Chetner, Michael, thank you so much.
22:51
Speaker 2: Thank you, Thanks Stephanie, thanks.
23:01
Speaker 3: For listening to Trumpomics from Bloomberg. It was hosted by
23:04
Speaker 3: me Stephanie Flanders. I was joined by Michael Deng and
23:07
Speaker 3: Chetna Kumar of Bloomberg Economics. Trumpnomics was produced as ever
23:12
Speaker 3: by Samasadi Moses and m and Avil Brown, with help
23:16
Speaker 3: from Amy Keen and special thanks this week to Rachel
23:20
Speaker 3: Lewis Chriskey. Sound designed for the shows by Blake Maples
23:25
Speaker 3: and Kelly Gary and Sage Bowman is Bloomberg's head of Podcasts.