Will Trump expand the H1-B program?

The available evidence points strongly toward a regime of restriction, not expansion, in the traditional sense of more H-1B visas or easier access. The administration has already moved to impose a $100,000 fee on some new H-1B petitions, proposed tighter eligibility for cap exemptions, advanced a wage-weighted selection system that would favor higher-paid applicants, and signaled higher prevailing wage requirements; together these changes reduce access and raise costs even if they improve the skill mix of approved applicants.

That said, the wording of the market question matters. If “expand high-skill immigration” is interpreted as shifting the program toward higher-skill, higher-paid workers rather than increasing the total number of visas, then there is some support for a limited Yes: the administration has explicitly said it wants to prioritize high-skilled and high-paid aliens and to use wage-based selection in the lottery. But that is an expansion in selectivity, not an expansion in volume, and the surrounding policy bundle still makes the program harder to use overall.

On balance, the most likely outcome is that Trump continues to reshape H-1B toward a narrower, more expensive, more selective program rather than formally expanding it. The current market price of 0.77 for No looks directionally correct, but it may be a bit too high if the contract settles on any interpretation that treats “favoring higher-skilled workers” as expansion. If the market requires actual growth in visa quantity or a clear loosening of access, then No is still the right side; if it counts a wage-weighted shift as expansion, the Yes probability is meaningfully higher than the market implies.