Maybe. Could be just needing to offset tax cuts. The present administration and Congress has has cut taxes on the wealthy. Either they find new sources of revenue to fill the hole, or they run up deficit.

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/03/04/what-we-know-about-the-us-h-1b-visa-program/

The number of H-1B applications approved in recent years has climbed. Nearly 400,000 were approved in fiscal year 2024, most of which were applications to renew employment. Rejection rates of H-1B applications spiked during Trump’s first term but fell under former President Joe Biden.

Computer-related jobs have been the most common occupation for H-1B workers for more than a decade. Since fiscal 2012, about 60% or more of H-1B workers approved each year have held a computer-related job. In 2023, the share was 65%, and these workers reported a median annual salary of $123,600.

India is the top country of birth for H-1B workers. Roughly three-quarters (73%) of H-1B workers whose applications were approved in fiscal 2023 were born in India.

This would amount to a tax, mostly on the tech industry employing skilled workers out of India, of about $40B/year.

Pew has a list of top employers. Amazon would take the single largest share, at over $1B/year.

On the other hand, Trump also eliminated the de minimis tariff exemption, which was a move that I would guess is probably very advantageous to Amazon (it let foreign e-retailers sell to American consumers while rarely paying tariffs, since they sold product imported in small quantities, whereas domestic e-retailers selling product tended to import in larger quantity and paid tariff).

kagis

https://communicationsdaily.com/article/2025/05/20/cbo-no-de-minimis-would-mean-52-b-in-revenue-first-full-year-2505200047?BC=bc_674b2b83cff7b

If de minimis ends for all imports in July 2027, as proposed in the tax bill currently being considered in the House of Representatives, the U.S. Treasury would collect an additional $5.2 billion in the first full fiscal year after the change, mostly in tariffs, but including $231 million in customs user fees.

So if you figure that Trump effectively levied a tax that principally hit Amazon's foreign competitors like Shein and Temu with that move, I expect that that partially offsets how hard this hits Amazon.

That being said, a lot of other tech firms are gonna get hurt, and aren't e-retailers. I doubt that this is a good move in terms of US tech strength.

Real question, is it $100k per visa per year? Or $100k per year for all the visa employees at a company

The US will lose its programming edge over the rest of the world but yeah the HB1 visa program was designed to exploit people. This won't fix it though.

The proper thing to do would be to fix the program to force median or above wage pay and limit visas for saturated positions.

As is typical for Trump. Even if he identifies a problem correctly he's incapable of coming up with a good solution.

The large companies will offshore the work, the smaller companies that can't afford to "buy" an exception, will just close down.

A lot of these visas are for medical staff ; they can't just be replaced by some guy who did a 6 week coding camp.

He can grant them exceptions.

Trump admin doesn't care about jobs for American workers, they just don't want brown people in America, so that's probably fine with them.

There is a 50% tariff on India currently, because of their import of russian crude oil. Does it also apply to software exports of India?

I can see the gold card being a way to give immediate citizenship to the ultra wealth and them tax them if the US was a sensible country. Instead it's a way to avoid taxes.

Per person

they abused it so much for biotech too. im not surprised most of the hires, or experts come from where tech source thier employees.

This was already in the legislation btw.

it wont make them hire locals more, it might make them hire internationally instead to support the operations in the states, without having them moving here.