President Donald Trump on Saturday amplified his promises to send National Guard troops and immigration agents to Chicago by posting a parody image from "Apocalypse Now" featuring a ball of flames as helicopters zoom over the nation's second-largest city. "I love the smell of deportations in the morning," Trump wrote on his social media site. "Chicago about to find out why it's called the Department of WAR." On Thursday, 475 mostly South Korean nationals were arrested at a Hyundai facility in Georgia. They will be returned to South Korea on a chartered flight.
That kind of news certainly will convince other would-be undocumented immigrants to stay in their home countries or to go back there if they are working illegally here. Also, US employers will be less likely to hire them. No wonder that the number of foreign-born workers in the labor force fell by 1.5 million from March through August down to 32.2 million (chart).
Trump's DOGE, tariff, immigration, and deportation policies are discombobulating the US labor market. They are certainly reducing the supply of foreign-born workers and causing employers to refrain from hiring them. The supply of workers may be a greater concern for the US economy than a weakening demand for labor.
