What if an H-1B visa clampdown hits US tech and spurs reshoring?
An H-1B clampdown is a tech-labor squeeze with a small AI-capex drag, so the cleanest read is modestly higher wage-driven breakevens plus a slight haircut to AI bellwether Nvidia and a reshoring cost bump — MIXED, not cleanly risk-off. Rhymes with the 2017-20 H-1B tightening that raised tech labor costs and pushed hiring offshore to Canada/India. Forward angle: constrained domestic talent accelerates capex into automation and offshore GCCs, so the second-order winner is the reshoring/automation theme even as near-term tech margins compress.
Every number ships with its receipt — the odds, the range, the precedents, and a public grade at Reality Check. The statistical machinery that produces it is proprietary.
The butterfly cascade
How this trigger trickles across markets, left → right — the root shock, its first‑order moves, then the ripple effects. Drag any node; tap a market for its real price history.
Resolution timeline — how this probability is moving
Our model's odds (electric blue) over time vs the market's (Polymarket, amber), from the past toward the 6–18 months horizon. Each dot is a real macro event that nudged the probability — green pushed it up, red pushed it down. Tap a dot for the source. Loading the probability audit trail…
What it would mean
If this plays out, it is a mixed shock. A skilled-visa (H-1B) clampdown hits US tech labor and accelerates reshoring. The trigger decomposes into signed root‑shocks — Labor shortage ▲ · AI capex ▼ — which propagate through our causal graph to the markets below.