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It’s no secret that Donald Trump and his administration have used fear as a major part of its anti-immigrant agenda.
Among the menacing ideas it's trotted out as a deterrent to immigrants, the administration has variously invoked the brutal legacy of a former slave plantation, the prospect of death by alligator and stealing children from their families.
And against this reality, a post from Donald Trump’s Truth Social account on Sunday — about supposedly not wanting to “frighten” foreign investors and and their employees — sounded more than a little odd.
“When Foreign Companies who are building extremely complex products, machines, and various other ‘things,’ come into the United States with massive Investments, I want them to bring their people of expertise for a period of time to teach and train our people how to make these very unique and complex products,” the post read. It went on to say, “I don’t want to frighten off or disincentivize Investment into America by outside Countries or Companies. We welcome them, we welcome their employees, and we are willing to proudly say we will learn from them, and do even better than them at their own ‘game,’ sometime into the not too distant future!”
The statement would seem to suggest that Trump is beginning to reckon with the consequences that his demonization of immigrants is having on the economy. It comes less than two weeks after his administration raided a Hyundai plant in Georgia, detained hundreds of South Korean immigrants working there over visa concerns, and posted images to social media of some of these immigrants in shackles prior to their deportation. To be clear, Trump’s administration hasn’t stopped doing all sorts of things that instill fear in and wreak havoc on the lives of immigrants. But Trump may be realizing that some acts that blatantly threaten free enterprise in the U.S. are giving foreign investors pause.
MSNBC columnist Michael Cohen explained how Trump effectively undercut the American economy by resorting immediately to deportation rather than seeking to resolve any visa concerns:
South Korean engineering companies are frequently hired by American companies to set up new manufacturing facilities because it can be difficult to find American workers with the necessary skills. But once that initial work is done, U.S. employees work the factory floors. The Hyundai-LG facility in Georgia is supposed to employ 8,500 workers. Now, all of that is on hold. Multiply that disruption across nearly two dozen factories, and potentially hundreds of thousands of new manufacturing jobs could be affected.
Factory work isn’t the only labor sector that’s taken a hit from Trump’s anti-immigrant tactics. As Politico reported, farm work is suffering also:
The U.S. agricultural workforce fell by 155,000 — about 7 percent — between March and July, according to an analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics data. That tracks with Pew Research Center data that shows total immigrant labor fell by 750,000 from January through July. The labor shortage piles onto an ongoing economic crisis for farmers exacerbated by dwindling export markets that could leave them with crop surpluses.
Reports have been emerging from across the country of farmworkers leaving their jobs out of fear of deportation. There have also been fears that Trump’s crackdown could worsen the current health care worker shortage that the U.S. was already facing, given how many of noncitizen immigrants work here as doctors, nurses and home aides. And on top of that, some in the scientific community worry Trump’s policies could lead to an academic “brain drain” as noncitizen researchers at American universities look to leave for more hospitable countries.
It’s noteworthy that Trump’s expressed desire here appears to be driven not by morality or humanity, but by economic concerns. We have no reason to believe he’s had a change of heart on immigrants. What seems more likely is that the connection between his faltering economy and his policies and rhetoric have finally begun to produce unavoidable consequences.