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Make America Smart Again? Donald Trump channels Vivek Ramaswamy — and torpedoes MAGA's anti-immigrant rhetoric

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The Times Of Indiapublisher-detail-arrow
12th November, 2025 21:03 IST


Donald Trump fans had huge meltdown on Boxing Day 2024 when Vivek Ramaswamy forgot to wear his faux-MAGA hat and accidentally spoke his mind where he argued the real problem is cultural — that American pop culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence for decades and therefore doesn’t produce enough top-tier engineers and that’s why Americans needed to hire immigrants. He essentially called much of the MAGA base too lazy for Silicon Valley. The backlash was immediate and Ramaswamy sidled out of the DOGEhouse to go run for Ohio Governor.

But now, the patron saint of MAGA, Donald Trump appears to have discovered the same truth: that Americans don’t have enough “talented people” – without draining the best brains from the world – to power the American economy. It was a remarkable admission from the man whose Washington circle is the living embodiment of the Peter’s Principle, with a literal Pete in the mix too. In a recent Fox News interview to Laura Ingraham, Trump said, “You can’t take people off the unemployment line and say, ‘I’m going to put you into a factory where we’re going to make missiles.’”



It was remarkable to hear that from the establishment which had unleashed ICE raids like White Walkers and made “foreigners stealing our jobs” his rallying cry. Of course, MAGA insiders would claim that Trump is differentiating between legal and illegal immigrants but Trump’s rhetoric and actions – both de jure and de facto – have made it harder for America to attract high-skilled immigrants.

He raised visa fees to punitive levels, tightened H-1B eligibility, delayed student work permits, expanded background checks, and created endless bureaucratic traps that drove away skilled workers, students, and families alike.



The MAGA Identity Crisis

There is something almost poetic about watching a movement built on the idea of “taking our country back” discover that the country it wants to take back cannot function without foreigners. Trump’s political machine thrived on grievance, on the image of the forgotten American worker betrayed by globalisation. That story collapses when the same factories chanting “Build the wall!” cannot find enough engineers to build the walls.

This is the hangover of economic nationalism. You can rail against open borders, but you cannot conjure a workforce out of rhetoric. You can deport workers, but not the laws of supply and demand. Roughly a quarter of the US STEM workforce and half of its graduate engineering students are foreign-born. Or as physicist Michio Kaku famously said, it’s America’s secret weapon: the H-1B visa .



America has always been built by immigrants, who helped it cultivate the world’s greatest economy and culture. It’s the reason geniuses of every kind, from Elon Musk to Sergey Brin , Andy Grove to Jensen Huang, Vinod Khosla to Steve Jobs, chose its shores.

Silicon Valley, that fabled land where chips, code, and caffeine collide, was never a purely American invention. It was—and remains—an immigrant project. The world’s most famous innovation hub was not built by the children of Mayflower settlers but by those who arrived later with restless minds and foreign passports.

Look at its foundations.

Sergey Brin, born in Moscow, built Google. Andy Grove, who escaped Soviet tanks in Budapest, made Intel the brain of the modern computer. Jensen Huang, who fled Taiwan as a teenager, founded NVIDIA, now the powerhouse of the AI era. Vinod Khosla, from Delhi, co-founded Sun Microsystems and seeded Silicon Valley’s startup culture. Elon Musk, from Pretoria, turned electric cars and rockets into national obsessions.

But they are only the marquee names. Patrick and John Collison came from rural Ireland to create Stripe, which powers much of the online economy. Jan Koum, a Ukrainian refugee, built WhatsApp. Aneel Bhusri, of Indian descent, co-founded Workday. Jerry Yang, from Taiwan, built Yahoo!, and Arash Ferdowsi, of Iranian heritage, co-founded Dropbox. Even Apple’s legendary co-founder Steve Jobs was the son of a Syrian immigrant.

Today, more than half of US tech unicorns were founded by immigrants or their children. Immigrants do not just fill roles in Silicon Valley; they define its DNA. Every visa delay, every xenophobic soundbite, is not just bad politics—it is bad business. Without immigrants, there would be no Google to search, no Tesla to drive, no NVIDIA to power AI, no Stripe to pay through. The Valley’s greatest export has never been technology. It has been proof that talent knows no borders.

The Economics of Exceptionalism

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The MAGA base does not see that. It sees a system rigged against the “real” American, not realising that the system is rigged for consumption, not production. Decades of financialisation hollowed out the middle class while rewarding speculation. So when Trump now needs missiles and microchips, he finds a nation fluent in credit cards, not calculus.

Every empire believes its greatness is self-made. America perfected this illusion through Hollywood and Harvard. But peel back the mythology and the truth is simple: America has always imported its genius. From German physicists in Los Alamos to Indian coders in Silicon Valley, from Filipino nurses in Texas hospitals to Mexican farmhands in California, the country’s strength has always come from elsewhere.

Trump’s paradox sits here. He promises to rebuild American greatness while throttling the pipeline that feeds it. The $100,000 H-1B filing fee announced this year was presented as protection for American workers, but in practice it punished small innovators and discouraged risk-taking. The result was less innovation and fewer opportunities. Even universities, once the soft power engines of US influence, are seeing international enrolments decline. That means fewer future founders, fewer patents, fewer taxpayers.

It is the same post-Brexit irony: nations that rage against globalisation end up begging for global labour. The populist who built his identity railing against global elites now depends on them to keep the lights on.

Vivek’s Silicon Sermon

Ramaswamy’s viral outrage was a spark because it said what many already suspected. His claim that American culture “venerates mediocrity over excellence” hit a nerve. The US does not lack ambition; it lacks endurance. A culture fuelled by instant gratification cannot sustain focus. TikTok has replaced the Protestant work ethic.

He pointed to 90s sitcom archetypes that prized popularity over ‘nerdiness,’ urged more math tutoring and weekend science contests, fewer sleepovers and sitcom reruns, and cast the moment as a ‘Sputnik’ wake-up call.

What doomed him was not the argument but the tone. MAGA can tolerate dissent but not condescension. By implying that American culture prizes normalcy over nerdiness — and that this holds back engineering excellence — he sounded like he was belittling the base, which many on the right heard as a veiled insult. The only person who can do that is Trump, but then he's sui generis.

But the episode revealed a deeper split inside the movement. There is the Silicon Valley wing of MAGA, which dreams of Mars and AI supremacy, and the Rust Belt wing, which just wants a steady job and dignity. Trump sits between the two, tweeting like a tech bro but governing like a union boss. The contradiction is growing harder to manage.

The Ideological Gymnastics

Trump’s recent change in tone is not philosophical. It is economic. Every major American industry is sounding the same alarm: there are not enough skilled workers. The Chamber of Commerce, defence contractors, even conservative governors admit that factories are short-staffed. Missile plants, chip foundries, and battery factories all rely on engineers who were born abroad.

This has forced Trump into a corner. The man who warned of “poisoned blood” now concedes that America must import brains. Hence the pivot to “merit-based immigration,” a way to accept diversity without admitting dependence. Immigrants are fine, so long as they are useful and invisible. It is how a movement obsessed with purity makes peace with pragmatism.

The New Immigration Equation

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Strip away the slogans and the numbers tell a clear story. About 70 percent of H-1B visas go to Indians and another 10 percent to Chinese nationals. Nearly 600,000 people currently hold H-1B status. This is not a loophole; it is the bloodstream of American innovation.

Yet populist suspicion has made even legal immigration a bureaucratic nightmare. Each fee hike, background check, and rule revision drives skilled workers elsewhere. Canada, Australia, and even Singapore have quietly benefited from the exodus. Toronto tech firms now advertise to frustrated engineers: “Rejected by US immigration? Build with us instead.”

The consequences are long-term. America’s share of global AI researchers is already slipping. Universities that rely on foreign students are cutting budgets. Hospitals are struggling to fill shifts. The labour crisis is no longer theoretical; it is visible in unbuilt homes, delayed projects, and unstaffed wards. Trump can promise missile factories, but he cannot manufacture mathematicians.

Labour Without Labourers - Marxist dreams?

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The labour shortage crisis exposes a truth Karl Marx would recognise: capital always outpaces the worker until it strangles itself. America wants production without producers, profit without people. It wants to build missiles without workers, and industries without immigrants.

Trump is the perfect symbol of this contradiction — the capitalist populist who rallies the working class while serving the boardroom. He wants the labour of immigrants without their presence, their productivity without their humanity. It’s the same paradox Marx warned of: capital needs labour to survive but despises the labourer once the profit is made.

Immigrants fill that vacuum because they still believe in the promise of work as redemption. They build, code, heal, and harvest while being told they don’t belong. They are the ghosts of capitalism — visible in output, invisible in credit. They make the economy run, but the ideology denies their existence. Immigrants make up 15 percent of nurses, 27 percent of health aides, and more than 40 percent of certain science and tech jobs. They are the invisible scaffolding of the American economy.

From Irish dockworkers and Chinese railroad builders to Indian and Mexican engineers, each generation repeats the same paradox—welcomed for labour, rejected for existence. Trump has simply turned that old contradiction into televised politics.

Silicon Patriotism

The feud between the tech elite and the populist right is not about patriotism; it is about economics. Elon Musk insists there is a “permanent shortage of excellent engineering talent.” Steve Bannon insists the H-1B programme is a “scam.” Both tell partial truths. America underproduces engineers, and corporations exploit that gap. The real problem lies in incentives. The country rewards quarterly profits, not long-term skill building. When Musk and Ramaswamy demand more visas, they are defending capitalism’s supply chain of innovation. When Bannon demands deportations, he is defending nationalism’s fantasy of self-sufficiency. Both visions are incomplete. America cannot dominate the world without depending on it.

The Great Reversal

Trump’s 2025 visa policies were designed to look tough while masking weakness. They pleased the base but punished the economy. Now, with empty factories and restless donors, Trump has started to backtrack. His Fox News admission was not a slip; it was preparation for a climbdown.
The next phase of Trumpism will not be about walls of concrete but about walls of paperwork. They will slow, not stop, the flow of talent. And somewhere between the enforcement raids and the visa lotteries, the American dream will keep gasping for air.

And in perhaps the most fitting twist of all, Trump has now endorsed Vivek Ramaswamy for Ohio Governor — the same man whose cultural-mediocrity rant rant caused a MAGA meltdown barely a year ago. It is political amnesia packaged as strategy. For a movement built on emotional loyalty rather than ideological coherence, yesterday’s heretic becomes today’s candidate if he kisses the ring hard enough.

The Closing Paradox

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It took time, but Trump finally realised that America is the greatest country — not because of its walls, but because of its doors.
Its greatness has never been self-made. It comes from a capitalist system that draws the best and lets their ambition build the rest. The world’s brightest minds powered the factories, labs, and fortunes that made the United States what it is.

And now, the man who built his career demonising immigrants finds himself needing them. His own policies chased away the people who kept America’s engines running. Companies froze hiring, universities lost foreign students, and industries from tech to agriculture faced empty shifts.
The irony is simple. The Shining City on the Hill cannot glow on rhetoric alone. Its lights are kept on by immigrants — the dreamers, the coders, the doctors, the builders — who came chasing opportunity and ended up defining it.

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