pühapäev, 15. juuli 2018

Reduced tourism to the United States

This was written in reply to a comment post in Slashdot, but then I'd worked on the reply so much, that it merited its own blog post.

Disclaimer: This post is an opinion piece, and does not rely on hard data.

It's called the Trump Slump. Travel from quality origin countries has slumped, especially from friendly places like the European Union and Canada. Well, there's lots of anecdotal evidence, too. I can't say much about OZ and NZ, because I haven't seen the articles of topic mention them. Other origin countries are those under the Muslim Ban, but a reduction of trips from these falls within the statistical margin of error.

LatAm is strange. Wealthy Latin Americans are unlikely to traverse the U.S. border anyway, unless absolutely necessary — be it a major health-related procedure, friends/family dying, custody, possible inheritance, and better safety. Not-wealthy ones fleeing violence and persecution are more likely to arrive the "old-fashioned way".

The Trump Slump is mitigated by moves from China and Russia, where the rich of those states seek to park a share of their assets in America, should the two regimes' economies ever tank, or other conditions worsen. Both are also pregnant with the "anchor baby" practice.

Do keep in mind, that official travel data about the States are susceptible to being massaged by D.C. tourism lobbies in order to look politically appeasing; such, that visits 'to North America' are mentioned, and then with data involving increased arrivals to Mexico and Canada to offset the actual slump in the U.S.

Countries with large amounts of poor people cannot afford to issue travel warnings on America, because they find it expedient, when some people leave, in order to off-load some of the real or perceived weight on society that could otherwise not be eased.

A free country relying on historically good relations with the U.S. lets the news about things being terrible stateside do their own work. Because reasons.