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Donald Trump isn’t even in office yet, but his strange political coalition of anti-immigrant Maga supporters and globalist billionaires has begun to fracture already.
The most recent cause was the nomination of Sriram Krishnan as Trump’s senior policy adviser for artificial intelligence. Krishnan is an American of Indian descent who has close ties to both Trump and Elon Musk (he helped facilitate the evolution of Twitter to X). Krishnan, like Musk, wants to make it easier for skilled foreign workers to come into the US on H-1B temporary visas.
While Silicon Valley depends on these visas thanks to a shortage of skilled tech workers in the US, the Maga crowd is against them, not only because they give preference to foreign workers but also because they can depress US tech wages. According to a 2020 paper by the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, 60 per cent of H1-B visas at the top 30 employers end up paying well below the local median wage for the given jobs. Trump’s own position on this has, unsurprisingly, flip-flopped; while he now appears to support the visas, in 2016, he called them a “cheap labor program”.
This rift triggered a viral online debate between Musk and Maga activist Laura Loomer, a self-proclaimed “proud Islamaphobe” who wants H1-B jobs to be given to American science, technology, engineering and mathematics students. “Our country was built by white Europeans . . . Not third-world invaders from India,” she posted on X. “It’s not racist against Indians to want the original Maga policies I voted for. I voted for a reduction in H-1B visas, not an extension.”
Meanwhile, Musk defended the visas, writing: “The reason I’m in America along with so many critical people who built SpaceX, Tesla and hundreds of other companies that made America strong is because of H1B. Take a big step back and FUCK YOURSELF in the face. I will go to war on this issue the likes of which you cannot possibly comprehend.”
There are many lessons to take from all this. But, as is usually the case when dealing with anything Trump-related, one wishes the cast of characters illustrating them was slightly less toxic.
Loomer’s posts are xenophobic, but it is brave to stand up to Musk and brings up an important issue, which is how to make sure that US workers are properly supported in the face of global competition. The fact that the state failed to do so in the manufacturing sector from the late 1980s onwards is one of the reasons that America got Trump to begin with.
Musk, on the other hand, is a self-interested hyper-capitalist, who has no compunction about using his power to frighten people. Loomer claims she lost her X verification badge and her ability to monetise posts after going into online battle with him.
But he is also quite right that America needs far more engineers than it has. What is more, the success of the South African-born entrepreneur — like that of so many in Silicon Valley and the US C-suite — reflects what is arguably America’s greatest strength: its openness to immigrants.
This fight matters because it reflects a fundamental rift in the Trump coalition that will only grow. The Maga crowd and the globalists disagree not only on immigration, but on defence, employment and free speech. This is a coalition whose most significant overlap was a desire to take down the previous government. Now that they have, I think it’s unlikely they’ll come together on anything else.
There are two other things to say about the H1-B dust up. First, Democrats are already looking to make hay with the divisions appearing in Trumpland. A memo written by a small group of lawyers, entrepreneurs and academics circulated last week noted that “the Loomer-Musk conflict represents a unique opportunity to coalition-build with disaffected factions of the Republican Party”, including those worried about tech oligarchy, free speech, worker rights and national security. On the latter point, Musk’s business relationships in China and reported conversations with Russia’s Vladimir Putin have already raised concerns in the defence community.
The memo has been getting positive feedback from some high-profile officials and former officials on the left, as well as academics, think-tankers and union advisers. Late last week, progressive senator Bernie Sanders weighed in on the topic, accusing Musk of pushing H1-Bs to get “cheaper” workers, not smarter ones.
Watch this space carefully. The fight between Republicans and Democrats for the working class is going to be the defining political battle of the next four years and beyond.
Second, while I find myself amazed to write this, Trump himself actually has a policy idea that could help bolster the number of Americans qualified for good tech jobs. He has proposed creating a free online university called the American Academy, which would offer high-level courses and accept transfer credits from other colleges and universities, helping to push back against rising tuition costs and student debt. The left-leaning Washington Monthly magazine recently praised the idea.
This sort of online education, along with programmes that graduate high-school students with a two-year college degree, is an obvious way to train up more tech workers quickly. My one caveat — please put someone other than Musk or Loomer in charge.
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