(BFM Stock Exchange) – The American president decided to apply costs of $ 100,000 to so -called “H1 -B” visas which especially allow American employers to recruit labor in tech, especially Indian. These additional costs may weigh on the margins of Silicon Valley companies.

Since taking office, mid-January, Donald Trump has blew hot and (especially) cold with American tech. The tenant of the White House announced massive investments in AI and data centers (the famous “Stargate” project) but also customs surcharges that add costs (especially for Apple with the iPhone) or, in the case of Nvidia and AMD, constraints for the export of fleas to China.

Last week, the American president released another measure likely to weigh on Silicon Vallley. Donald Trump has severely increased the cost of so-called “H1-B” visas, deciding to apply costs of $ 100,000 for new applications.

These H1-B visas allow American companies to recruit employees outside the United States in specialized trades where a shortage of labor can be observed. This can concern researchers in defense activities but also top-models.

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Visas especially used by tech

These visas have a duration of three years and can be renewed for three additional years. According to UBS, the current cost of these visas ranges from a minimum of 1,700 dollars to a maximum of $ 34,900, all costs included and including the extension of three additional years.

In fact, H1-B visas are mainly used by American groups to recruit employees in tech.

The document signed by Donald Trump claims that the proportion of employees in this sector benefiting from H-1B visas would have increased from 32% in 2003 to more than 65% “these recent years”.

According to official data cited by the SHRM, an association of American human resources professionals, 71% of H1-B visa beneficiaries came from India in 2024, and 12% from China.

“The biggest employers in H-1B holders are not surprisingly the technology giants. Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Apple, Meta or Tesla each have several thousand employees under this diet,” said John Plassard, investment advisor at Cité Gestion.

According to official data cited by Quartz, Amazon, Microsoft, Meta, Apple, Alphabet and Oracle would each have between 12,391 (for Amazon) and 2,092 (Oracle) employees benefiting from this visa.

The idea of ​​the Trump administration remains simple. By adding the cost of these visas, the American executive wants to push large technological groups to hire more and train American employees rather than recruiting abroad. It is therefore a measure of national preference.

“The cost for companies is colossal: at 100,000 dollars per file, the annual bill could exceed $ 14 billion for American employers. Suffice to say that American competitiveness could come out weakened rather than reinforced,” wrote John Plassard in a note published on Tuesday.

The American secretary of trade, Howard Lungick, deliberately admitted that the system was aimed at “stopping to bring people to take our jobs”. Which, in passing, is not obvious, the American groups which can simply strengthen the workload in Canada or in “off-shore”, that is to say in India directly.

A long -term impact?

Can these additional costs penalize tech groups on the stock market and have them derailed from their good progress, the composite nasdaq taking 16%

Since the start of the year (and 25% over six months)?

Investors have already provided a form of response. On Monday, the first session where the market could react to Trump’s announcement, tech groups did not have a clear drop. The NASDAQ even ended up 0.7%, widely helped by the announcement of a massive nvidia investment in Openai, which could go up to $ 100 billion.

Reuters reports that analysts believe that the impact for tech groups should be “moderate” because the White House has assured that the costs of $ 100,000 would only apply to new requests and not to H-1B visa renewals.

In the long term, however, these same analysts warn that “the shortage of skilled labor in the United States could lead to an increase in wages and reduce the beneficiary margins” of tech groups, adds the agency.

Questioned by Quartz, Michael Kelly, from Reach Strategic, does not expect the actions of the sector to suffer from expense.

“In the longer term, if the shortage of talents leads to delays in production or pressure on margins, this could weigh on the multiple valuation (tech groups, editor’s note). Investors will closely follow the information relating to recruitment,” said this market expert.

Large reinforced groups?

“The decision to take up $ 100,000 the costs related to the H-1B visa raises questions, but it does not necessarily sign a negative turning point for American tech,” said John Plassard.

“Admittedly, large platforms like Google, Meta, Apple or Microsoft will have to adjust their recruitment policy, but their financial power will allow them to absorb this cost much more easily than small structures or foreign companies in Outsourcing. In the short term, the measure could therefore strengthen their dominant position, reducing competition from Indian service providers such as TCS, Infosys or Wipro, The sending of talents to the United States, “he dissects.

According to Bloomberg, Indian technological companies have erased around $ 10 billion in market capitalization on Monday.

“For portfolios, this context argues to distinguish leaders capable of transforming constraint into a strategic advantage, actors weakened by this regulatory shock,” concludes John Plassard.

Apart from the American groups, the most likely French value of this measure remains capgemini. Monday, the action of the French digital service company fell 1.9%.

In a note published on the same day, UBS underlines that Capgemini had only 349 new H-1B visa requests approved for the year 2025, against around 1,000 on the average of the previous five years.

“Even if it seems that Capgemini already reduces its use of the H-1B program, if the company continued to hire an average of 800 new employees holding a H-1B visa per year for three years, the additional cost would be around $ 80 million, even if the impact on the income statement would be a third of this amount the first year, to reach the total amount in the third year”, wrote UBS.

Conclusion: “President Trump’s H-1B visa reform is not important for Capgemini, but it can change the nature of the American IT services industry and competition for local talents”, judges the Swiss bank.