.

U.S. will open its universities to 600,000 Chinese students, says former President Donald Trump. While welcoming the Chinese students to the U.S. colleges, Trump said that the tariffs are also an important matter.

“I hear so many stories that we’re not going to allow their students. We’re going to allow their students to come in. It’s very important, 600,000 students. It’s very important. But we’re going to get along with China,” Trump told reporters from the White House on Monday.

The number of Chinese students in the U.S. was to reach 600,000 at the beginning of the year. The move was not reciprocated by China for a long time. In fact, earlier in the month, the Chinese president Xi Jinping had lashed out at the U.S. for the sanctions and other hardline measures imposed on Beijing by Washington.

The trade talks, however, have not reached a mutually agreed level. This summer, Washington imposed a blanket tariff of 145 percent on all Chinese imports to the United States. The Chinese retaliated by also imposing a 125 percent tariff on all U.S. goods. While these tariffs were a part of an agreement, they could not be signed by Trump to hold off on more tariffs, as both parties reached the agreed limit of tariffs.

On June 16, Trump said that more tariffs could also be imposed on Chinese exports to the United States.

On Friday, Trump had said that China, “smartly,” had gained control over the global magnet production, and the U.S. will need one year to catch up with China in magnet production. “We are going to have to have a 200 percent tariff because China, intelligently, went and they sort of took a monopoly on the world’s magnets. It’ll probably take us a year to have them,” Trump added.

Chinese Students to the U.S.

At present, nearly 270,000 Chinese students are studying in U.S. colleges. If Trump’s new number of 600,000 turns out to be true, then it is more than double the existing numbers. Trump, in his last couple of weeks, has been reaching out to universities across the United States. As per the data from the Institute of International Education, Chinese students are the top in providing funds to universities. 200 colleges across the U.S. have more than 1,000 Chinese students on their rolls.

In May this year, when Trump’s Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, said that the U.S. will “aggressively revoke” visas of Chinese students who were working for the Chinese Communist Party and were engaged in research that had national security overtones. This order sent shockwaves across American universities that not only counted on funds from these Chinese students but also saw them as part of the diversity and inclusion agenda that the government had been pushing for a long time.

Trump, too, had given a breather, though unofficially, in June this year when he said that he had “always been in favor” of Chinese students coming to the United States for higher studies. In the last month, colleges have also pushed the need to invite more Chinese students to the U.S. and not to discourage them.

The assurance of bringing more Chinese students has come when Trump is meeting South Korean president, Lee Jae Myung, on Tuesday, Sept. 27. “I would like to meet him this year,” he said when asked whether he would meet Xi Jinping this year. “As you know, we’re taking a lot of money in from China because of the tariffs and the different things. It’s a very important relationship. It’s a much better relationship economically than it was before with Biden. But he allowed that. They just took him to the cleaners,” he added.