WSJ: Trump Expected to Bolster ‘Buy American’ and ‘Hire American’ Directives

Eli Stokols writes at the Wall Street Journal that President Donald Trump will sign an Executive order Tuesday embodying major tenets of his Make America Great Again platform that helped launch him to victory in November:

President Donald Trump will sign an executive order in Wisconsin on Tuesday directing a government-wide review aimed at putting new teeth back into decades-old “Buy American” and “Hire American” directives.

The 220-day review process, which could lead to additional executive orders and possibly legislation, will focus on preventing foreign workers with H-1B visas from, as one senior administration official put it, “undercutting American labor at less cost,” which the official labeled as “an abuse” of the current system.

“This is a clear statement from the president of the United States to shore up some of these abuses,” the official continued. The goal, the official said, is ensuring that “everyone can have a realistic path to economic success and full employment.”

 For the past several years, the government has used a lottery to distribute 85,000 visas for high-skilled foreign workers. It is a program popular with the technology industry, and one that critics say displaces U.S. workers and can depress salaries.