By displaying the objective of expelling 3,000 illegal migrants per day, nearly one million per year, Donald Trump is preparing a demographic shock for multiple economic ramifications.
The Economic Policy of the Trump administration is due to the so far around three flagship reforms: trade war, Big Beautiful Bill and deregulation. But it would be a bit short to reduce it to this triptych and forget to take into account the side effects of migration policy on the economy.
By displaying the objective of expelling 3,000 illegal migrants per day, nearly one million per year, Donald Trump is preparing a demographic shock for multiple economic ramifications. Which ones?
In the United States, more than elsewhere, history is intimately linked to successive migratory waves. According to the OECD*, the inhabitants born abroad constitute one of the engines of the American economy: in the face of natives, they are less unemployed, have a rate of employment and a rate of participation in the higher labor market. Contrary to popular belief, their net tax contribution – taxes and contributions relating to the services and services received – is positive and represents almost 1% of GDP. This population represents just under 20% of the active population, a level close to the average of OECD countries.
In 2025, the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) **, an American and neoliberal American Think Thank on the economic level, believes that the Migration policy of the Trump administration will lead for the first time for decades to a negative migratory balance. A shock for economic growth in 2025, estimated between -0.3% and -0.4% on American GDP according to the scenario chosen. About two thirds of this impact are explained by the brake in terms of production, the third party remaining by the drop in induced consumption and by the increase in precautionary savings among the migrants who remain on American soil.
The impact on the level of inflation is not negligible either, since it is estimated at 0.5% increase in additional prices.
Finally, the impact on employment is also notable since the AEI anticipates a drop in job creations over the second half of 2025, estimated from 10,000 to 60,000 according to the scenarios, against 124,000 in the first half. This would make it possible to maintain a content unemployment rate, but risks generating wage tensions in the sectors where paperless labor without paper is the most represented: construction, agriculture, hotels and catering in the primary.
If the consequences of tariff measures, the budget program and deregulation measures already seem to be taken into account by the financial markets, the stigmas left by the wave of expulsions in the United States could be scrutinized by investors in the coming months.
Opinion written on July 18, 2025
* OECD Source, Prospects for international migration 2024 – November 2024
https://www.oecd.org/fr/publications/2024/11/international-migration-outlook-2024_c6f3e803.html
** Source AEI, Immigration Policy and Its Macroeconomic Effects in the Second Trump Administration – juillet 2025
https://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Immigration-Policy-and-Its-Macroeconomic-Effects-in-the-Second-Trump-Administration.pdf?x85095