President Donald Trump is touting a draft trade deal with China that includes an unprecedented and unneeded trade item: Chinese white-collar graduates to fill white-collar jobs sought by U.S. graduates.
“OUR DEAL WITH CHINA IS DONE, SUBJECT TO FINAL APPROVAL WITH PRESIDENT XI AND ME,” Trump said via TruthSocial on June 11.
Under the deal, he said, China would supply rare-earth minerals needed for special magnets, and in exchange, “WE WILL PROVIDE TO CHINA WHAT WAS AGREED TO, INCLUDING CHINESE STUDENTS USING OUR COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES.”
The announcement prompted angry responses from his supporters.
“This is NAFTA and WTO for white-collars,” responded Kevin Lynn, founder of U.S. TechWorkers, which lobbies for American college graduates.
“Trump needs to understand the Chinese student visas are a non-negotiable for those of us affected by them,” said Stephen Schutt, an opponent of the H-1B visas used by Chinese migrants. “The effects of being displaced are staggering. It’s not just that our wages are stagnating it’s that we’re losing our jobs, our livelihoods and everything.”
The pending deal is a “doomsday clock that has been set in motion for any American aspiring to white collar professional jobs,” Lynn said, adding that the deal “reduces every citizen to a tradeable economic unit.”
The public pushback may force a Trump reversal, in part because he is already on record calling for a reduction in Chinese white-collar migrants.
In late May, Trump said U.S. universities should halve the inflow of foreign students, including Chinese students. “We have people who want to go to Harvard and other schools [but] they can’t get in because we have foreign students there,” Trump said.
In 2024, that inflow delivered more than 350,000 mixed-skill foreign graduates into the career-starting white-collar jobs needed by recent U.S. graduates.
In a Thursday press conference, Trump defended the draft migrants-for-minerals deal, partly by citing lobbyist-provided claims of corporate economic losses:
I’ve always been in favor of students coming in from other countries. That includes China, and we have 500,000 Chinese students coming in.
I’ve always been in favor of it. Does it mean that you have to watch people? Yeah, you have to watch students, but you have to watch other people. I’ve always been strongly in favor of it, I think it’s a great thing. It’s also — it’s good for our schools. It’s good for, I think it’s good for our country.
I’m also in favor of having them stay. I’ve been in favor of letting them stay. If you get educated for four years, you’re willing to get educated for four years. I like people being able to say, you know, they have some great students… To me, that’s almost like, you know… buying your way in in a very legitimate way.
And you have stories where Apple wants to hire somebody [but] they can’t hire because he can’t stay. He went to a great school, he finished first in his class, they made him a big offer, and everything’s done, but he has no idea whether or not he’s going to be able to stay. I’m all for making sure that people like that can go to work for all of our great companies.
And you know what they do? They go back to their country, and there are stories that are all over the place, they go back to their country, and they start a company just like they were going to start here. They end up starting it in China or India or someplace else, and now they’re among the richest people in the world. They’ve got thousands and thousands of employees and make it great. This is happening all the time because they’re not allowed to stay.
“I think we’ll probably end up doing something about that,” Trump added.
Opposition
Lynn slammed the deal for demoting citizens into mere economic units to be traded for minerals from China’s dictatorship. “Tradable people are no longer citizens” with rights secured against government overreach, he said.
This denial of status is partly driven by the U.S. government’s failure to help U.S. companies find alternative sources for critical rare minerals instead of relying on Chinese suppliers, he said. This grants China outsized leverage over student visas and future job markets. “The administration might be looking for a short-term solution, but there are huge long-term consequences,” said Lynn.
“If they give the [Chinese migrants] jobs, what they’re essentially doing is ripping out the bottom rungs of the career ladder for American students,” he said. Once U.S. graduates are pushed off the lower rungs of the career ladder, the foreign graduates surge past them to become the self-serving C-Suite executives and hiring managers for company directors, he said.
“This will be the kill shot to young Americans trying to enter engineering, computer science, and the like,” said one former business executive. “I’m beyond angry, I’m sad now. I can’t believe this is my country and this is reality,” he said via X.
Many supporters that Trump needs for the 2026 midterm elections are angry at the migrants-for-minerals plan.
In Trump’s administration, the China deal is being negotiated by business-aligned appointees, but there is no place at the table for the white-collar graduates and professionals whose futures are being traded for minerals, Lynn said.
This process is already far advanced in the U.S. because of the H-1B and Optional Practical Training programs. These work permit programs allow U.S. executives to hire many Indian and Chinese graduates for quick promotion to administrative, hiring, and management slots. This destructive and discriminatory process has been underway since roughly 1990 with very little oversight from U.S. anti-discrimination agencies — and very little growth in U.S. salaries despite rising prices for homes, groceries, and energy.
However, many of Trump’s deputies and appointees know the damage that white-collar migration has done to American graduates, families, professionals, and communities. Stephen Miller, Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Treasury Sec. Scott Bessent, have all acknowledged the huge toll on white-collar migration.
“Trump is a really bright guy, he knows what’s going on, and obviously he’s willing to sacrifice Americans for a trade deal,” said Lynn. “In 2016, he had displaced American tech workers up on the stage with him. Yes, he knows.”
Trump has never pushed to restrict the inflow of legal immigrants, said Lynn. “The fact that he is not a restrictionist is becoming more and more obvious every time he opens his mouth,” he added, noting that Trump’s public opposition to illegal migrants is also accompanied by his repeated offers of labor giveaways to GOP-aligned business groups.
On Thursday, for example, Trump talked about how his crackdown on illegal migration is prompting complaints from farmers and the owners of low-wage hotels and retail stores, many of whom are foreign-born franchise operators. “We’re going to have an order on that pretty soon… We’re going to have to use a lot of common sense on that.”
But Trump also keeps zig-zagging between his business allies and his populist voters. Late on Thursday, for example, he posted another message on TruthSocial saying:
The Biden Administration and Governor Newscum flooded America with 21 Million Illegal Aliens, destroying Schools, Hospitals and Communities, and consuming untold Billions of Dollars in Free Welfare. All of them have to go home, as do countless other Illegals and Criminals, who will turn us into a bankrupt Third World Nation.
Trump’s draft minerals-for-migrants deal with China is also a precursor to a pending trade deal with India, Lynn said.
India’s government recently signed a deal in the United Kingdom that will allow more Indian graduates to move into the U.K. job market. Lynn explained, if Trump accepts migrants as tradable objects, then India will raise its current demand that the U.S. accept more Indian white-collar migrants in a swap for importing more U.S. grain, fuel, and weapons. “All this is going to do is encourage more Indians to go into the jobs pipeline here in the U.S.,” he said.
India will also demand that Indian college migrants be exempted from paying U.S. Social Security, perhaps making them even cheaper for U.S. C-suite managers and board directors, Lynn warned.
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