US president defends enrollment of Chinese and other foreign students at American universities in Fox News interview: media

US President Donald Trump criticized France on Monday in a back-and-forth with a Fox News host as he defended the enrollment of Chinese students at universities in the US, CNN reported Monday.

In an interview with Laura Ingraham that aired Monday on Fox News, Trump defended allowing foreign students to study in the US as a "good" practice and pushed back on a call to reduce their numbers, saying it would be financially destructive to the nation's higher education system, Bloomberg reported Tuesday.

According to Bloomberg, Trump told the Fox News host that "you don't want to cut half of the people, half of the students from all over the world that are coming into our country — destroy our entire university and college system — I don't want to do that."

"I actually think it's good to have outside countries. Look, I want to be able to get along with the world," he added.

Bloomberg reported that Trump was repeatedly pushed by the Fox News host on why he wouldn't reduce the number of students from foreign countries — in particular China — who are studying in the US, with Ingraham casting it as a policy the president's supporters would back and a change that would make it easier for Americans to enroll in schools.

"We do have a lot of people coming in from China, we always have China and other countries. We also have a massive system of colleges and universities. And if we were to cut that in half, which perhaps makes some people happy, you would have half the colleges in the US go out of business," Trump said, Bloomberg reported.

"They're not the French. They're the Chinese. They spy on us. They steal our intellectual property," Ingraham claimed in the Fox News interview.

"Do you think the French are better?" the president retorted.

"Yeah," Ingraham said.

"I'm not so sure," the president responded, claiming that "we've had a lot of problems with the French where we get taxed very unfairly on our technology with they put 25 percent taxes on American products."

In May, the US government said it was going to "aggressively revoke" Chinese student visas before ultimately reversing course on that move, CNN reported.

However, in August, the US government said it plans to allow 600,000 Chinese students into the US — a figure more than double the number in the US now, NBC News reported.

CNN, citing the Institute of International Education, reported Monday that China has consistently been one of the main sources of international students to the US - approximately 1 in 4 international students in the US are from China.

China was the top source of international students in the US for 15 straight years until it was surpassed by India just last year, according to figures from Open Doors, a State Department-backed database tracking international student enrollment, CNN reported.