President Trump’s plan to boost the manufacturing of semiconductor chips in the U.S. includes using foreign workers, he said, but only to help train Americans to do the high-tech jobs.
Mr. Trump admitted that he was taking a “little heat” from some of his supporters about foreign companies bringing in foreign workers to set up and run new chip-making plants.
“If you have to bring people to get those plants opened, we want you to do that, and we want those people to teach our people how to make computer chips and how to make other things,” he said Wednesday at the U.S.-Saudi Investment Forum in Washington.
“You can’t come in, open up a massive computer chip factory for billions and billions of dollars like is being done in Arizona and think you’re going to hire people off an unemployment line to run it.”
Despite getting criticized by conservatives for the foreign workers, he said the policy is “MAGA.”
“I love my conservative friends, I love MAGA, but this is MAGA and those people are going to teach our people how to make computer chips and in a short period of time our people are going to be doing great and those people can go home where they probably always want to be,” he said.
Mr. Trump mentioned the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement raid on the electric vehicle battery plant in Georgia, where hundreds of engineers were brought from South Korea to train Americans to run the new plant.
More than 300 South Korean workers were detained in September at the Hyundai plant.
“They were told to get out, and I said, ‘Stop it, Don’t be stupid,’” Mr. Trump said. “And we worked it out. And now they’re teaching people how to do it.”
He called out Nvidia’s Jensen Huang in the audience, whose company makes computer chips and is building plants in the U.S., as an example of how foreign workers will have to teach Americans.
“I don’t think you can open up a big plant with your friend from Taiwan … with people that don’t even know what a chip looks like,” Mr. Trump said. “The people that are against this are really, really smart. They’re unbelievable patriots, but they just don’t understand our people have to be taught this is something they’ve never done.”
“We’re not going to be successful if we don’t allow people that invest billions of dollars in plant and equipment to bring a lot of their people from their country to get that plant open, operating and working,” he said.
• Mallory Wilson can be reached at mwilson@washingtontimes.com.
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