President Donald Trump said this week that the United States is prepared to issue as many as 600,000 student visas to Chinese nationals, roughly twice the number enrolled at U.S. universities in the last academic year. Speaking to reporters during an Oval Office meeting with South Korean President Lee Jae-myung on Monday and later at a Cabinet session, Trump called the influx “very important” for bilateral relations and for financially strained U.S. colleges. He added that President Xi Jinping had invited him to visit China and said the two leaders were “getting along very well.” Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick defended the move in a Fox News interview, arguing that without foreign tuition revenue “the bottom 15 percent of U.S. universities and colleges would go out of business.” Trump echoed that point, warning that the nation’s higher-education system would “go to hell very quickly” if hundreds of thousands of international students were barred. The proposal has triggered an unusually sharp backlash from conservative allies. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene said admitting so many Chinese students “may be loyal to the CCP,” while Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said he would “rather have none,” calling the plan a bailout for academia and a potential espionage risk. Commentators Laura Ingraham and other right-leaning media figures questioned how the policy fits Trump’s “America First” agenda. The announcement marks a reversal from the administration’s tone earlier this year, when Secretary of State Marco Rubio pledged to “aggressively” revoke visas for Chinese nationals with suspected security ties. The White House has not released a timeline or regulatory details for implementing the expanded quota, leaving universities, lawmakers and trade negotiators waiting for clarification.