According to United States Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, President Donald Trump’s new H-1B visa strategy aims to temporarily invite qualified foreign workers to train Americans for high-skilled occupations rather than long-term reliance on foreign labour. The comments came after Trump admitted that the United States needed to attract foreign talent from all over the world for specific professions, during a Fox interview with Laura Ingraham, on 10th November.
The president said that Americans do not have “certain talents” and added that “people have to learn.” Trump’s remarks were perceived as a relaxation of his administration’s strict immigration policies in the United States.
However, Bessent has now made the stance clear. In a conversation with Brian Kilmeade of Fox News, he characterised the new H-1B visa policy as a “knowledge transfer” initiative aimed at reviving American manufacturing. He explained that the new strategy aims to revive the US manufacturing industry after decades of outsourcing.
BREAKING: Treasury Sec. Scott Bessent says President Trump's plan for visas is to TEMPORARILY bring in expert overseas workers to train Americans, they they go BACK home.
"Train the US workers. Then, go home. Then, the US workers fully take over."
KILMEADE: You understand… pic.twitter.com/vDbabSVxDW
— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) November 12, 2025
Bessent conveyed, “For 20-30 years, we have not offshored precision manufacturing jobs. We can’t snap our fingers and say you are going to have ships overnight. We want to bring the semiconductor industry back to the US. There will be big facilities in Arizona.” He further stated, “I think the president’s vision here is to bring in overseas workers who have the skills for three, five, seven years to train the US workers. Then they can go home, and the US workers will fully take over.”
“An American can’t have that job, not yet. Because we haven’t built ships in the US for years, we haven’t built semiconductors, so you know that this idea of overseas partners coming in, teaching American workers, then returning home, that’s a home run,” Bessent responded regarding questions about outsiders displacing American workers.
The president previosuly argued that the US cannot assign long-term unemployed individuals to technical positions in manufacturing and defence without the necessary training. He remarked that the country needs skilled employees from other nations when asked if limiting H-1B visas would not be a top priority for his administration. He asserted, “We also do have to bring talent into the country.”
“No, you don’t, no you don’t, 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 where we’re going to make missiles,” Trump firmly countered after Ingraham challenged, “We have plenty of talented people here.”
