WASHINGTON >> President Donald Trump said today that he would order a temporary halt in issuing green cards to prevent foreigners from immigrating to the United States, but he backed away from plans to suspend guest worker programs after business groups exploded in anger at the threat of losing access to all foreign labor.

Trump, whose administration has faced intense criticism in recent months for his handling of the coronavirus crisis, abruptly sought to change the subject tonight by resuming his assault on immigration, which animated his 2016 campaign and became one of the defining issues of his presidency.

He cast his decision to “suspend immigration,” which he first announced Monday night on Twitter, as a move to protect American jobs. But it comes as the U.S. economy sheds its workforce at a record rate and when few employers are reaching out for workers at home or abroad.

Trump said that his order initially would be in effect for 60 days, but that he might extend it “based on economic conditions at the time.”

“We can do that at a little bit different time if we want,” he said of a second executive order that could further restrict immigration.

Lawyers at the Justice Department were still studying whether the president had the legal authority to unilaterally suspend the issuance of green cards, an order that caught officials at the Defense Department and the Department of Homeland Security off guard, according to people with knowledge of the announcement.

The decision not to block guest worker programs — which provide specific visas for technology workers, farm laborers and others — is a concession to business groups. Jason Oxman, president of the Information Technology Industry Council, a technology industry trade group, said that “the United States will not benefit from shutting down legal immigration.”

As late as Monday night, after Trump’s tweet, top White House officials said they believed the president’s order would apply to some of the guest worker programs, while exempting others. By this afternoon officials acknowledged that devising an order that applied to some guest workers but not others would be overly complicated, and they abandoned it.

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