Why The Cold War Between Tech CEOs and Trump Is About To Go Nuclear

POSTED BY: SIGNYM
UPDATED: Monday, August 10, 2026 19:04
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In a word: H-1B visas

But where will we get our cheap programmers from???

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Over the weekend, openly defiant CEOs, particularly among the tech sector, expressed their displeasure with Trump's Friday executive order temporarily banning refugees and limiting travel from seven Muslim countries, with both words and deeds, among which the following (summary courtesy of Axios):

VCs funding the ACLU: Several venture capitalists, as well as a few entrepreneurs, took turns soliciting donations to the American Civil Liberties Union through social media and personally matching those donations.
Airbnb volunteers to help provide housing for impacted immigrants: The home-sharing company said that it will work with travelers and organizations to provide housing for those impacted by the executive order, whether through volunteer hosts or by funding housing.
Lyft and Uber commit millions of dollars to legal aid: On Sunday, Lyft said it will donate $1 million to the ACLU over the next four years. Later in the day, Uber said it will create a $3 million legal defense fund for impacted drivers, as well as provide legal assistance and compensate their lost wages.
Google is setting up a $2 million crisis fund: The search giant has set up a fund that will donate to the American Civil Liberties Union, Immigrant Legal Resource Center, International Rescue Committee, and UNHCR.

On Monday morning, former US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, speaking in an interview with Bloomberg Television, said that he is “gratified” by what he heard from the tech community. “As global businesses, they have a huge stake in the United States being a nation of the Statue of Liberty rather than being a nation of refugee camps.” He added that “they have a huge stake in the United States supporting an open and tolerant global system, they have that stake for their employees, their customers, they have it for the reputation of the United States and they have spoken out.”

That may be, but the biggest reason for the anger by tech CEOs at the Trump administration is a simple, and a more selfish one. The reason for the simmering cold war between tech CEOs and Trump can be summarized in just three letters: H1-B. The bottom line is that tech CEOs fear Trump will single them out for outsourcing jobs or shut down the so-called H-1B visa program they use to hire high-skilled foreign employees for crucial engineering and technical jobs.

And, as Axios adds, White House officials say they are right to be nervous, especially about changes to the visa program. Chief strategist Steve Bannon and policy chief Stephen Miller are known to be deeply skeptical of the program, and will have a strong, vocal ally when Jeff Sessions gets confirmed as Attorney General. Some further observations:

Trump's mixed messages: On the campaign trail, he promised to "end forever the use of H-1B as a cheap labor program." He later signaled in a meeting with tech leaders that he's most concerned about companies misusing the visas to displace lower-wage American workers.
How it works: Visas are capped at 65,000 a year, with 20,000 additional visas for foreign workers with master's degrees. The demand for the visas is so high that the cap is usually exceeded within a few days of the application window opening. The visas are distributed to companies through a lottery system.

Tech companies such as Microsoft, Google, IBM, Cisco, Apple, Intel and Facebook say the visas are crucial for specialized jobs they can't fill domestically because of a shortage of American graduates with the right technical skills. When CEOs spoke out over the weekend about the ban, they pointed out the importance of allowing the "best and brightest" to work in the U.S.

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Which is why if a news report about Trump's next imminent executive order is accurate, the simmering cold war between the tech CEOs and Trump is about to nuclear.

Bloomberg reports that the Trump administration has drafted an executive order aimed a

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1KIKI

Tuesday, January 31, 2017 3:20 AM

The Zero Hedge article essentially reposts two sources - Bloomberg and Axios Media.

Bloomberg is a well-established 'source' with a known focus and bias.

Axois Media (wiki): AXIOS Media or Axios is a news and information company started in 2016 by Politico co-founder Jim VandeHei, former Chief White House correspondent at Politico, Mike Allen, and former Politico Chief Revenue Officer Roy Schwartz. Axios launched in 2017.[1] In the summer of 2016, it secured $10 million in a round of financing led by Lerer Hippeau Ventures. Backers include NBC News, Emerson Collective, Greycroft Partners, and David and Katherine Bradley, owners of Atlantic Media.[1]

The company has a mission statement that consist of, “Media is broken—and too often a scam.” It plans to focus on "business, technology, politics, and media trends."[1]

Whether or not Axios posts 'fake news' remains to be seen.

But at least half the article comes from a source - Bloomberg - even you, THUGGER, would find legitimate.

Which you would have known if you exercised your (admittedly deficient) reading skills and actually read the article.

Assuming you can stop being such a troll, of course.

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How did your beloved 'democratic' party fuck up so badly?

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In a word: H-1B visas But where will we get our cheap programmers from???= SIGNY

So you're ok paying more for your computer?- GSTRING

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In a word: yes. That's how "trickle down" works: money trickles down from this who can afford to pay more for luxury items to those who work making them.

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I don't think you understand the relationship between Business and Consumers.

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I don't think you understand the relationship between business and workers.

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You can boil most all of that down to the fact, repeated several times:
"the visas are crucial for specialized jobs they can't fill domestically because of a shortage of American graduates with the right technical skills."
When we produce more home grown programmers with the right skills they won't have to look over seas. = GSTRING

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Baloney.
I know expert programmers and scientists- EXPERT programmers and scientists - both American-educated and "imported", and to a person they (including the imports) will tell you that the ONLY reason to hire foreign programmers and scientists is to reduce costs. It has nothing to do with skills. Companies laid off excellent native-born programmers, only to replace them with (in many cases) more poorly-trained H-1B imported labor.

I see these imports- Indians and Chinese, mostly - and how they are treated by our subcontractors: They're "sponsored" by their employers, and are hostage -literally- to the company who sponsors them. I see the same four (Indian) subcontract programmers who come in by bus every day, and waiting together at the bus stop in the evening, because (1) none of them can afford a car and (2) they all have to rent together because they can't afford their own rental. Most of these H-1B people - at least the ones I know- are working scared. Meanwhile, perfectly suited, well-skilled American graduates go begging for jobs.

Don't believe that crap about STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) is going to save you from joblessness or poverty.


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"Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor"- William Blake

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When I was laid off in 2009 this is exactly what happened. My job didn't go to India, my salary went to India. For what they were paying me, they were able to staff 5 or 6 skilled people in India.

I worked along side an Indian named Harish that was learning the job to go back to his country and teach it to others. I wasn't mad at him personally. I knew this is just the way things are going and he was just doing his job. He was getting paid quite a lot while in the States, and was going to make a lot less when he went home. He was saving that money while working here and said he'd be a rich man when he went home with what he saved. I don't remember what he said everything costs, but I do remember him saying that you could buy a new car in India for $6,000 US, and a pack of smokes for 25 cents US. This was in Chennai India back around 2007 or so.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Originally posted by G:
Then you native experts are being priced out of the market - welcome to Retail 101! That's called Competition!

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That's called America is Screwed because of Globalism.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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I buy quality stuff and I try to pay as little as possible for it. I really don't care where it comes from.

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"Especially with the Internet making shipping from Hong Kong doable ..." ?

Shipping is made doable by large freighters running on cheap bunker fuel.

I THINK what you meant to say is that the internet makes it possible to SHOP globally. And cheap shipping delivers the goods.

It's probably true that most people, with limited disposable income, will buy the cheapest thing that'll do the job. That doesn't make it sustainable. It becomes the race to the bottom.

I wonder if purchase price is the true dividing line between the haves and the have-nots. People who need to be frugal (because staying afloat is a possibility) watch their pennies and buy cheaply because they need to. People with too much money buy the most expensive things they can, as much as they can, just to show everyone that they can.

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How did your beloved 'democratic' party fuck up so badly?

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Originally posted by THGRRI:
About your source for most of the fake news you post here SIG.

Zero Hedge is a batshit insane Austrian school finance blog run by two pseudonymous founders who post articles under the name "Tyler Durden," after the character from Fight Club.It's essentially apocalypse porn. It has accurately predicted 200 of the last 2 recessions.

The site posts nearly indecipherable analyses of multiple seemingly unrelated subjects to point towards a consistent theme of economic collapse any day now.

Only people who are trolls post opinions from there SIG.

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The one sane voice. ^

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Well RF, I guess you're another 'source' Nazi, who would rather debate 'sources' than facts and logic. I even suspect a 'good source' is one that confirms your beliefs, no matter how flimsy and contradictory. While a 'bad source' is one that challenges them, no matter how factually founded and well-reasoned.

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How did your beloved 'democratic' party fuck up so badly?

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