What did Donald Trump do today?

He bragged about crippling one of the United States' biggest export industries. 

Trump has been reeling from the political blowback of his trade war, as prices continue to rise for consumers while the job market comes to a standstill. It's impossible to put a precise amount on just how much inflation went up in October, because Trump's record-long shutdown caused an unrecoverable delay in the collection of data and will never be released. This is the first time in its history that the federal government has failed to publish that benchmark survey. But suffice it to say, Americans who can't demand literal gold bars from foreign dignitaries are angry, and it's putting Trump in a dangerous position.

In an apparent attempt to combat that, the Trump White House put out a document titled "Good News You May Have Missed." It tries to put a good spin on the new Trump economy, for example by claiming that tax refunds will be going up in the coming year. This is actually true, but not for a reason that will make most Americans happy. When the tax rates change, as they did this year, it takes a few months for new income withholding to rates to kick in. In other words, the non-wealthy Americans who won't see any real tax savings from Trump's tax bill will get bigger refunds next year because too much of their income is being withheld this year.

But the most surprising bit of "good news" that Trump touts in the document is that foreign student enrollments are down 17%.

This is unambiguously terrible news for universities, the American students who attend them, and the industries that rely on the students they produce. Having international students attend American schools is a potent form of soft power, allowing for American influence to spread into the commercial and government leadership of the rest of the world. 

But more importantly, it's also an enormous financial windfall for the United States. American colleges and universities are the envy of the world, attracting wealthy and talented students who pay, either out of pocket or through subsidies from their home governments, the top tuition rates that subsidize American students. Virtually no foreign students receive domestic scholarships. 

Importantly, they don't take opportunities away from American students, because universities have more capacity as a result of the revenue they bring in.

That revenue is, or was, enormous. Noncitizen students bring in $44 billion dollars and create some 378,000 American jobs—and that's a conservative estimate that doesn't take into account the money that international students spend outside of universities. Given that relatively few Americans study overseas, that means the educational sector is running possibly the biggest trade surplus in the whole American economy. 

 

Trump loathes American universities, or at least pretends to, and has made academia a political target during his second term. But Americans themselves actually like the education sector, and they certainly like the medical and scientific research it supports, which Trump has slashed since returning to office.

The White House has not offered any further explanation as to why Trump causing a sudden multi-billion dollar shortfall in one of the most important American industries is "Good News."

Why does this matter?

• Crippling a major portion of the economy is nothing to brag about.  

• Even by Trump standards, scaring away customers who pay top dollar is a stupid business plan. 

• Americans are nowhere near as anti-immigrant or stupid as Donald Trump wants to think they are.