Trump’s 4-year visa cap could cost US economy up to $400 billion — here’s why

3 min readUpdated: Jul 29, 2026 12:57 PM IST The F-1 visa is a non-immigrant category for students attending academic institutions in the US, while the M-1 visa covers vocational and non-academic programmes.The new visa rules for international students in the US can incur a loss of $200 billion to $400 billion to the country’s economy, says a study in the Peterson Institute for International Economics. The new regulation caps the stay of international students in US universities at a maximum of four years. The rule also mandates that the students, mostly on F-1 visas, will transition to the new system “automatically”. They will hence face fixed admission deadlines and will be required to file for an extension of stay to complete longer degrees.It means disallowing many of them to stay back