Any announcement barring Chinese students from U.S. universities would be “a very insulting thing to say to a country,” President Donald Trump told Fox News during his trip to China.
“I will tell you that [U.S. universities] don’t want that to happen because you won’t have much of a school system,” he said in his interview with Sean Hannity. “Good students,” he added.
The comments came late in the interview after Trump had outlined trade deals that commit China to buy U.S. passenger jets, oil, and agricultural products. China’s dictatorial leader, Xi Jinping, “is a very smart person, and we have a good relationship.”
Posters of U.S. universities, including Harvard University, are seen on the wall at an overseas education agency in Beijing on May 29, 2025. (JADE GAO/AFP via Getty Images)
The issue of Chinese students “is something [that] didn’t come up today,” Trump said.
Roughly 265,000 Chinese students attended U.S. schools and universities in the 2024/25 school year. Many use the H-1B and Optional Practical Training visa worker programs to gain jobs in Fortune 500 companies — especially in financial services and in computer security jobs.
Trump’s comments come amid rising concern among American graduates who are losing opportunities because companies use AI technology to outsource more entry-level jobs to India and other countries.
Trump explained his support for the inflow of young Chinese:
If you want to see a university system die, take half a million people out of it, and you know, the ones that won’t be heard are the top schools — the top schools will do fine — but your lower schools, … the ones that don’t do quite as well …. they’ll be dying all over the place.
I frankly think that it’s good that people come from other countries and they learn our culture, and many of them want to stay here. I think it’s good.
Not everybody agrees with me, and it doesn’t sound like a very conservative position, and .. I’m a conservative guy. I’m really a common-sense guy, I think more than a conservative guy, I think MAGA is common sense, you know. People understand we want strong borders, we want a strong military, we want good education, we want lower interest rates.
Hannity asked Trump about “nefarious” activities by Chinese people in the U.S., such as intellectual property theft.
Trump dismissed those concerns, saying, “They do things to us, and we do things to them,” adding:
It’s a very, very fine line, the whole thing with students. So they have 500,000 students and our university system does great, you know, it does great.
“So it’s something I’m always looking at, but it’s a very insulting thing to tell a country we don’t want you people in our schools,” Trump repeated.
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