Commentary by Stephen Macaulay
Cantor Fitzgerald is a financial services firm that you’re likely not to ever have anything to do with, unless you are a high-net-worth individual (if you are, and given that you are reading this, why don’t you make a donation to The Hustings to keep this thing going?).
Mainly, Cantor Fitzgerald deals with things like institutional equity and investment banking services.
Howard Lutnick joined Cantor Fitzgerald in 1983 and for the better part of his career there, which ended this past February when he was named Commerce Secretary, Lutnick was the firm’s CEO. The firm is privately held, evidently with more than a small amount of ownership in the Lutnick portfolio, because when he left the firm he appointed one of his sons chairman and another executive vice chairman.
The point is, with the exception of an extremely short term as a broker in a firm dealing with currency exchange, Lutnick has onlyworked at Cantor Fitzgerald.
This isolation from what the rest of us generally do by working at Main Street firms, not the bank at the corner of the street, undoubtedly led to his comment in March, during the height of DOGE-mania, related to fraud and Social Security:
“If you stop payments and listen for complaints, you’ll find the fraudsters. My mother-in-law would call me and say, ‘Howard, I didn’t get my check!’ And I’d say, ‘Exactly. That’s how we find them.’”
Lutnick is a billionaire. Odds are he could Venmo his mother-in-law some digits to tide her over until the government check came in.
(A digression: Remember when Elon Musk was claiming there would be $2 trillion in annual savings and then $1 trillion from DOGE rooting out waste, fraud and abuse? It is estimated that it has “saved” about $180 billion, which is a long way from a trillion, and much of this “savings” took the form of doing things like cancelling contracts and selling assets, to say nothing of terminating people—and just showing that the whole “take a chainsaw to it” mindset wasn’t merely a stunt but an actual approach, there were the firing and rehiring of people that did things like address the bird flu outbreak or man the Veterans Crisis Hotline.)
On Friday President Trump signed an executive order that requires a $100,000 annual fee for H-1B visa applications. Those visas are typically filed by tech firms who are looking for foreign specialists. Individuals don’t simply apply for an H-1B. Firms sponsor the applicants. There is an annual limit of 85,000 visas granted per year.
So now if Apple or Meta or Oracle wants to hire some particular people, then they are going to have to pony up some additional cash.
In his peculiar logic, Trump said, “We need workers. We need great workers, and this pretty much ensures that that’s what’s going to happen.”
Presumably that’s what’s been happening, otherwise there wouldn’t be firms filing for H-1B visas.
Which brings us to Howard Lutnick.
According to Politico, Lutnick said when the president signed the order:
“The whole idea is no more with these big tech companies or other big companies training foreign workers. They have to pay the government $100,000, and then they have to pay the employee.”
He added:
“If you’re going to train somebody, you’re going to train one of the recent graduates from one of the great universities across our land. Train Americans, stop bringing in people that take our jobs.”
So let’s see. A tech company identifies a really smart person who is in another country and works with that person to try to get an H-1B. But now that is going to cost $100,000.
How does that benefit corporations? Isn’t it penalizing them?
Oh, but the issue is that the person is a foreigner and that foreigner might leave the company and take with her the training received that the company—not the government — paid for (and what’s more, that person has been paying taxes throughout that period). Shouldn’t a corporation decide whether this is worth the risk without the government putting its thumb on the scale?
And the “one of the great universities across our land” is rich, as thanks to the Administration over $7 billion in science grants have been eliminated.
“Stop brining in people that take our jobs.” The visa-holders aren’t taking anyone’s job: they are being offered the job by a firm. Again, the government should not be involved in staffing decisions.
It also needs to be noted that the visa is initially good for three years and can be extended to no more than six years, so presumably if there are qualified American job seekers at the end of that period, the job may become theirs.
Tariffs and steel and aluminum are hobbling U.S. durable goods manufacturers.
Now the visa fee is providing unnecessary complexity to the tech sector. Yes, they can afford it — $100,000 is like the pocket change found in the cushions of Howard Lutnick’s couch — but shouldn’t the government be doing everything it can to facilitate the advance of our tech firms?