The Trump administration is drawing a hard line in the sand regarding the duration of stay for skilled foreign workers, proposing a “three to seven year” rule that fundamentally alters the H-1B visa landscape. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent introduced this concept to clarify President Trump’s recent remarks on the necessity of importing global talent. While Trump admitted that the US needs to bring in skilled people because the country lacks “certain talents,” Bessent ensured that this message was not interpreted as a blanket opening of the borders. Instead, he outlined a vision where foreign professionals are welcomed for a specific, finite period to perform “knowledge transfer” before being required to return to their home countries.
Bessent’s interview with Fox News highlighted the transactional nature of this new policy. The administration views foreign labor as a stopgap measure to address critical deficiencies in the American workforce. “Then they can go home, and the US workers will fully take over,” Bessent stated, making it clear that the ultimate beneficiary of this policy is the domestic worker. The visa holders are essentially being hired as trainers for a national upskilling program. This timeline of three to seven years is calculated to be long enough for American workers to learn the trade, but short enough to prevent the foreign workers from becoming a permanent fixture in the labor market.
The necessity of this “rented talent” model stems from the degradation of US manufacturing capabilities. Bessent pointed to the shipbuilding and semiconductor industries as prime examples of where the US has lost its way. “We haven’t built ships in the US for years,” he noted, explaining that an American worker simply cannot walk into these jobs today because the expertise has been lost to outsourcing. The administration’s solution is to bring in the people who still have that expertise—the “overseas partners”—and have them download their knowledge into the American labor force. It is a strategic admission of weakness aimed at building future strength.
President Trump’s earlier comments provide the context for this strategic pivot. When asked about the H-1B restrictions, Trump was candid: “No, you don’t have certain talents and you have to… People have to learn.” This acknowledgment that the US workforce is not currently all-encompassing in its abilities allows the administration to justify the temporary importation of foreign workers to a base that might otherwise oppose it. By framing the foreign worker as a temporary instructor rather than a permanent competitor, Trump and Bessent are attempting to navigate the complex politics of immigration and economics.
This “home run” scenario, as described by Bessent, envisions a future where the US has successfully extracted the necessary skills from the global market and reintegrated them into the domestic economy. It is a bold plan that treats human capital as a transferable asset. The administration is banking on the idea that with three to seven years of guidance from the world’s best, the American worker can once again dominate the industries that defined the nation’s industrial past. The clock starts ticking the moment the visa is stamped, with the goal always being the eventual departure of the trainer and the ascension of the trainee.
