In Reversal, Trump Says Chinese Students Are Welcome

President Trump said that Chinese international students would be welcome in the U.S. in a post on Truth Social on Wednesday announcing the terms of a pending trade agreement with China. 

In exchange for shipments of rare earth metals, the U.S. “WILL PROVIDE TO CHINA WHAT WAS AGREED TO, INCLUDING CHINESE STUDENTS USING OUR COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES (WHICH HAS ALWAYS BEEN GOOD WITH ME!),” Trump posted (capital letters his). 

The about-face comes less than two weeks after Secretary of State Marco Rubio promised to “aggressively revoke” Chinese students’ visas and implement a much stricter review process for nonimmigrant visa applications from the country. 

That announcement, an escalation of the Trump administration’s campaign to decrease the number of foreign students at American universities, threw higher education into a panic. International enrollment has become a financial lifeline for many institutions, and Chinese students make up nearly a quarter of all international students in the U.S.—around 280,000 in 2023–24, according to the Institute of International Education, more than students from any other country. They make up 16 percent of graduate STEM programs and 2 percent of undergraduate programs.

Rubio’s visa-revocation announcement also led to distress among Chinese families, whose hopes of sending their children to a prestigious American university seemed to be fading. In May, the Chinese foreign minister called the policy “politically discriminatory” and “irrational.”