Donald Trump says Chinese students are welcome in US, reversing course and triggering MAGA base

TOI Correspondent from Washington: In growing signs that White House is ready to jettison Washington's bipartisan Indo-Pacific policy of supporting India rise as a counterweight to China, MAGA supremo Donald Trump said on Monday that the US will allow Chinese students to come in big numbers to America.

Trump said the US is "going to get along with China" and asserted that it is going to allow their students to come in, appearing to reverse his administration's position that suspended visas for Chinese graduate students and researchers with ties to its military. The policy led to the revocation of visas for approximately 1,000 Chinese scholars.


"We're going to allow their students to come in. It's very important, 600,000 students. But we're going to get along with China," Trump told reporters from the Oval Office during a meeting with South Korea's President Lee, even as he warned Beijing of a 200 per cent tariff if it withheld rare earth magnets export to the US.

It is not clear where Trump dredged the 600,000 numbers from since there are currently around 270,000 Chinese students in the US. India has more than 300,000 students in the US, having overtaken China in this regard.

Broadly, foreign students from the global south are having to jump through hoops to study in the US now as Trump's MAGA hardliners have launched a campaign against them saying US universities and corporations use them to undercut wages and deny jobs to native-born Americans.

Trump's sudden outreach to Chinese students, who has increasingly preferring to study at home, triggered an immediate backlash from MAGA hardliners, including those who have been abusing each other.

"Nobody, I repeat nobody, wants 600,000 more Chinese “students” aka Communist spies in the United States. China murdered 1.2 million Americans. Now they get to replace us?
This cannot happen," said MAGA megaphone Laura Loomer, tagging Trump's immigration policy czar Stephen Miller to her post on X. "We should not let in 600,000 CHINESE students to attend American colleges and universities that may be loyal to the CCP," chimed in Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor-Greene who is locked in an ugly public catfight with Loomer. "Trump Pisses Off Laura Loomer and MTG With Sudden China Pivot," a conservative media headline read.

But Trump's pivot seemed to extend beyond the student visa issue as he alternately courted and threatened Beijing to keep an emerging Eurasian grouping in the form of SCO, which is meeting in Tianjin this week, off balance. At one poin during his meeting with South Korean President Lee, Trump said that the United States holds "incredible cards" in its trade dispute with China, and he could "destroy" their economy if he chose to.

But he wouldn't -- and the US would "get along with China," he said.
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