Vance lashes out at Microsoft for firing Americans, hiring H1-B workers; tech investor fact checks him
Lashing out at companies like Microsoft for laying off thousands of employees, Vance said he did not believe in the 'bulls**t story' that they cannot find workers in America.
Speaking at a bipartisan event co-hosted by the Hill and Valley Forum, Donald Trump's deputy questioned the logic for companies like Microsoft firing thousands and then applying for H1-B visas for workers, implying they are hiring overseas.
'You see some big tech companies where they'll lay off 9,000 workers, and then they'll apply for a bunch of overseas visas. And I sort of wonder; that doesn't totally make sense to me,' Vance said.
The US V-P said that this pattern 'worries me a bit'
'That displacement and that math worries me a bit. And what the president has said, he said very clearly: We want the very best and the brightest to make America their home. We want them to build great companies and so forth,' he said.
'But I don't want companies to fire 9,000 American workers and then to go and say, 'We can't find workers here in America.' That's a bulls**t story,' Vance added.
JD Vance's comments come days after it was reported that Satya Nadella-led Microsoft has fired 9,000 employees but applied for more than 6,000 H-1B visas since October.
JD Vance's comments were immediately fact-checked by an Indian-origin tech investor, who said that the leader was 'misleading people'.
In a post on X, the tech investor wrote, 'Microsoft didn't bring in new foreign workers after laying people off , they renewed visas for long-time employees who've been in the U.S. legally for many many years, stuck in green card backlogs.'
He said that companies are letting their long-time employees stay in the job that was earned by them.
'Saying that's 'replacing Americans' is like saying letting a loyal employee stay and renew his visa in the building is the same as hiring someone new off the street,' the tech investor wrote.
'It's not. It's just letting them stay in the job they already earned.'
He asked Vance to stop 'weaponising lies'.
'And here's what JD won't say: many of the 9,000 laid off were H‑1Bs too. They got no severance, no safety net , just a 60-day countdown to leave the country. If you care about fairness, fix the backlog. Don't weaponize lies.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Hindu
9 minutes ago
- The Hindu
India will continue to buy Russian oil, government sources tell NYT
India will keep purchasing oil from Russia despite U.S. President Donald Trump's threats of penalties, two Government sources told The New York Times, not wishing to be identified due to the sensitivity of the matter. "These are long-term oil contracts," one of the sources said. "It is not so simple to just stop buying overnight." Mr. Trump last month indicated in a Truth Social post that India would face additional penalties for purchases of Russian arms and oil. On Friday (August 1, 2025), Mr. Trump told reporters that he had heard that India would no longer be buying oil from Russia. Soured relations: The Hindu editorial on Trump's 25% tariff, 'penalty' The New York Times on Saturday (August 2, 2025) quoted two unnamed senior Indian officials as saying there had been no change in Indian government policy, with one official saying the government had "not given any direction to oil companies" to cut back imports from Russia. Reuters reported this week that Indian state refiners stopped buying Russian oil in the past week, following a narrowing of discounts in July. "On our energy sourcing requirements ... we look at what is there available in the markets, what is there on offer, and also what is the prevailing global situation or circumstances," Foreign Ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal told reporters during a regular briefing on Friday. Mr. Jaiswal added that India has a "steady and time-tested partnership" with Russia, and that New Delhi's relations with various countries stand on their own merit and should not be seen from the prism of a third country. The White House in Washington did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Indian refiners are pulling back from Russian crude as discounts shrink to their lowest since 2022, when Western sanctions were first imposed on Moscow, due to lower Russian exports and steady demand, sources said earlier this week. The country's state refiners — Indian Oil Corp, Hindustan Petroleum Corp, Bharat Petroleum Corp and Mangalore Refinery Petrochemical Ltd — have not sought Russian crude in the past week or so, four sources familiar with the refiners' purchase plans told Reuters. India's top oil supplier On July 14, Mr. Trump threatened 100% tariffs on countries that buy Russian oil unless Moscow reaches a major peace deal with Ukraine. Russia is the top supplier to India, responsible for about 35% of India's overall supplies. Russia continued to be the top oil supplier to India during the first six months of 2025, accounting for about 35% of India's overall supplies, followed by Iraq, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. India, the world's third-largest oil importer and consumer, received about 1.75 million barrels per day of Russian oil in January-June this year, up 1% from a year ago, according to data provided to Reuters by sources. Nayara Energy, a major buyer of Russian oil, was recently sanctioned by the European Union as the refinery is majority-owned by Russian entities, including oil major Rosneft . Last month, Reuters reported that Nayara's chief executive had resigned after the imposition of EU sanctions and company veteran Sergey Denisov had been appointed as CEO. Three vessels laden with oil products from Nayara Energy have yet to discharge their cargoes, hindered by the new EU sanctions on the Russia-backed refiner, Reuters reported late last month.
NDTV
15 minutes ago
- NDTV
Trump's Tariffs Leave A Lot Of Losers. But Even Winners Will Pay A Price
President Donald Trump's tariff onslaught this week left a lot of losers - from small, poor countries like Laos and Algeria to wealthy US trading partners like Canada and Switzerland. They're now facing especially hefty taxes - tariffs - on the products they export to the United States starting Aug 7. The closest thing to winners may be the countries that caved to Trump's demands - and avoided even more pain. But it's unclear whether anyone will be able to claim victory in the long run, even the United States, the intended beneficiary of Trump's protectionist policies. "In many respects, everybody's a loser here,'' said Barry Appleton, co-director of the Center for International Law at the New York Law School. Barely six months after he returned to the White House, Trump has demolished the old global economic order. Gone is one built on agreed-upon rules. In its place is a system in which Trump himself sets the rules, using America's enormous economic power to punish countries that won't agree to one-sided trade deals and extracting huge concessions from the ones that do. "The biggest winner is Trump," said Alan Wolff, a former US trade official and deputy director-general at the World Trade Organization. "He bet that he could get other countries to the table on the basis of threats, and he succeeded - dramatically.'' Everything goes back to what Trump calls "Liberation Day'' - April 2 - when the president announced "reciprocal'' taxes of up to 50% on imports from countries with which the United States ran trade deficits and 10% "baseline'' taxes on almost everyone else. He invoked a 1977 law to declare the trade deficit a national emergency that justified his sweeping import taxes. That allowed him to bypass Congress, which traditionally has had authority over taxes, including tariffs, all of which are now being challenged in court. Trump retreated temporarily after his Liberation Day announcement triggered a rout in financial markets and suspended the reciprocal tariffs for 90 days to give countries a chance to negotiate. Eventually, some of them did, caving to Trump's demands to pay what four months ago would have seemed unthinkably high tariffs for the privilege of continuing to sell into the vast American market. The United Kingdom agreed to 10% tariffs on its exports to the United States, up from 1.3% before Trump amped up his trade war with the world. The US demanded concessions even though it had run a trade surplus, not a deficit, with the UK for 19 straight years. The European Union and Japan accepted US tariffs of 15%. Those are much higher than the low single-digit rates they paid last year, but lower than the tariffs he was threatening (30% on the EU and 25% on Japan). Also, cutting deals with Trump and agreeing to hefty tariffs were Pakistan, South Korea, Vietnam, Indonesia and the Philippines. Even countries that saw their tariffs lowered from April without reaching a deal are still paying much higher tariffs than before Trump took office. Angola's tariff, for instance, dropped to 15% from 32% in April, but in 2022 it was less than 1.5%. And while the Trump administration cut Taiwan's tariff to 20% from 32% in April, the pain will still be felt. "20% from the beginning has not been our goal, we hope that in further negotiations we will get a more beneficial and more reasonable tax rate," Taiwan's president Lai Ching-te told reporters in Taipei Friday. Trump also agreed to reduce the tariff on the tiny southern African kingdom of Lesotho to 15% from the 50% he'd announced in April, but the damage may already have been done there. Countries that didn't knuckle under - and those that found other ways to incur Trump's wrath - got hit harder. Even some of the poor were not spared. Laos' annual economic output comes to $2,100 per person and Algeria's $5,600, versus America's $75,000. Nonetheless, Laos got rocked with a 40% tariff and Algeria with a 30% levy. Trump slammed Brazil with a 50% import tax largely because he didn't like the way it was treating former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who is facing trial for trying to overturn his electoral defeat in 2022. Never mind that the US has exported more to Brazil than it's imported every year since 2007. Trump's decision to plaster a 35% tariff on longstanding US ally Canada was partly designed to threaten Ottawa for saying it would recognize a Palestinian state. Trump is a staunch supporter of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Switzerland was clobbered with a 39% import tax, even higher than the 31% Trump originally announced on April 2. "The Swiss probably wish that they had camped in Washington'' to make a deal, said Wolff, now senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. "They're clearly not at all happy.'' Fortunes may change if Trump's tariffs are upended in court. Five American businesses and 12 states are suing the president, arguing that his Liberation Day tariffs exceeded his authority under the 1977 law. In May, the US Court of International Trade, a specialized court in New York, agreed and blocked the tariffs, although the government was allowed to continue collecting them while its appeal wound its way through the legal system, and may likely end up at the US Supreme Court. In a hearing on Thursday, the judges on the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit sounded sceptical about Trump's justifications for the tariffs. "If (the tariffs) get struck down, then maybe Brazil's a winner and not a loser,'' Appleton said. Trump portrays his tariffs as a tax on foreign countries. But they are paid by import companies in the US who try to pass along the cost to their customers via higher prices. True, tariffs can hurt other countries by forcing their exporters to cut prices and sacrifice profits, or risk losing market share in the United States. But economists at Goldman Sachs estimate that overseas exporters have absorbed just one-fifth of the rising costs from tariffs, while Americans and US businesses have picked up the most of the tab. Walmart, Procter & Gamble, Ford, Best Buy, Adidas, Nike, Mattel and Stanley Black & Decker have all hiked prices due to US tariffs "This is a consumption tax, so it disproportionately affects those who have lower incomes,'' Appleton said. "Sneakers, knapsacks ... your appliances are going to go up. Your TV and electronics are going to go up. Your video game devices, consoles, are going to go up because none of those are made in America.'' Trump's trade war has pushed the average US tariff from 2.5% at the start of 2025 to 18.3% now, the highest since 1934, according to the Budget Lab at Yale University. And that will impose a $2,400 cost on the average household, the lab estimates. "The US consumer's a big loser, Wolff said.
Time of India
33 minutes ago
- Time of India
Over 2 lakh forms requesting Mahadevi's return to Nandani Jain mutt sent to President
Kolhapur: An online petition initiated by MLC Satej Patil garnered 2,04,421 signatures nationwide, demanding the relocation of the elephant, named Mahadevi alias Madhuri, to the Jain mutt in Nandani. On Saturday morning, the signed petition forms were sanctified by Jinsen Bhattarak Pattacharya, the chief of the Jain mutt, and sent to President Draupadi Murmu via post from Kolhapur's Ramanmala post office by Satej Patil and former MLA Ruturaj Patil. Speaking on the occasion, Satej Patil said, "After the Supreme Court's decision, a lot of disappointment spread among the people. This discontent can be seen as within 48 hours, 2,04,421 people from across the nation signed the petition supporting the call to bring the elephant back to the Nandani Jain mutt. We took printouts of all these forms, sanctified them by the chief of the mutt, and then sent them to the President. We request President Draupadi Murmu to give attention to this and resolve thë issue." Patil also commented on Vantara CEO Vivaan Karani's visit to Kolhapur on Friday, saying, "We were not invited. Only Mahayuti party MLAs and MPs were invited for the meeting when the CEO of Vantara arrived in Kolhapur. Therefore, we do not know anything about what discussions were held, what agreement took place or whether a settlement was done. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like American Investor Warren Buffett Recommends: 5 Books For Turning Your Life Around Blinkist: Warren Buffett's Reading List Undo The guardian minister has said it is a legal issue and legal procedure will have to be followed, but Mahayuti MLAs and MPs should declare in how many days the elephant will be brought back. As an opposition party member, we have done the work of showcasing public sentiments in front of the President." He added, "Elephants causing menace in Ajara, Chandgad, and Bhudargad regions should be taken to Vantara instead of this tamed temple elephant. If they give a protocol, then we assure them that the elephant will be taken care of as per their guidelines. This is an issue of religious and traditional beliefs. If over 14,000 cow shelters are run by Jain communities across the world, then how can someone say that they can't manage a single elephant?" Meanwhile, several villages in Kolhapur and Sangli districts observed a village bandh on Saturday, shutting down businesses and schools. Rallies were held in these villages demanding the return of the elephant to Nandani. The elephant's rehabilitation from the mutt to a Jamnagar facility, carried out on the night of July 29 after the Supreme Court dismissed the mutt's appeal against the Bombay high court order directing such relocation, prompted an emotionally and politically charged campaign to bring Mahadevi back. Get the latest lifestyle updates on Times of India, along with Friendship Day wishes , messages and quotes !
