Trump and Travel

   
    Apparently our Prime Minister irritated the POTUS at the recent NATO meetings and the President was already unhappy with us as a recent headline indicates: "U.S. Doubles Number of 5-year Bans on Travellers From Canada: Border Authority Says No Policy Change, But Lawyers see Trump's Influence." One gets the impression that most Canadians are also unhappy with Trump and I think that wearing a MAGA hat to the market in London would be rather risky.
   The popularity of Trump as a topic of conversation up here is rivalled only by his unpopularity as a politician, at least within the small circle in which I travel. In the more than a 1000 days since the Inauguration, he may have been dethroned for a day-or-so by Don Cherry who has similar views about immigrants (although I am sure that Trump would disagree and say he never was beaten in the discussion ratings). I can assure you that the conversation at breakfast in the morning with the hockey guys will be around Trump, not the Throne Speech.
   The many who dislike Trump immensely do not appear to have experienced a diminishment in their desire to travel to the sunny land over which he rules. Right after the Inauguration I did a post with the title, The Trump Slump and asked the question: "Going To The U.S?" The post and some of the sources indicated that tourism to the States would drop and there is even a reference suggesting that Canadians with a conscience should boycott the USA and take vacations elsewhere.
   In the small circle in which I travel there does not seem to be any indication that travel plans are being altered - even by those who dislike Trump intensely. That may be because some deep thinking has been done about the effectiveness of boycotts which can be indiscriminate in terms of impact. Perhaps it is okay, for example, to boycott Tampa and Orlando, which would surely be full of Trump supporters, but not Asheville or Portland. Or perhaps the sacrifice is simply too great because the destinations are close and sunny. It was much easier back in the apartheid days to not buy South African wines.
   Since my small circle of friends is surely not representative of all Canadians it is best to look to Stats Can for the answer about the trends of travel by Canadians to the U.S.. Apparently we are not turning our backs to the sunshine and the lure of the beach trumps Trump-loathing.

"More Canadians fly to the United States during the first nine months of 2019, but fewer trips are taken by car
Canadian residents made 3.6 million trips to the United States in September, up 1.3% from August.
Over the first nine months of 2019, Canadian residents made 1.8% fewer trips to the United States year-over-year. A decline in the number of Canadian residents making trips to the United States by car (-3.6% to 25.1 million trips) was partially offset by more Canadians travelling to the United States by plane (+4.2% to 7.5 million trips). About three-quarters of the trips made by Canadian residents to the United States were by car.
The lower value of the Canadian dollar, a factor known to influence decisions to travel to the United States, may have contributed to the decline in 2019. The Canadian dollar averaged US$0.75 over the first nine months of 2019, compared with US$0.78 during the same period in 2018."

[Apart from the value of the Loonie, remember also that one has to factor in variables such as whether or not Celine Dion (or Wayne Newton, for that matter) is playing in Vegas and the prices of such things as Cheetos and Moon Pies at Piggly Wiggly.]

Sources:
The headline is from CBC News, Dec. 4, 2019.
For my earlier post see: The Trump Slump.
The data from Statistics Canada are from The Daily, 2019-11-20.

Post Script:
Just the other day, a good friend did me a great favour (picking up our tall Christmas tree). He does teach a small graduate seminar, a component of which includes visiting a particular site in the U.S. The trip did not happen this year and one reason it was cancelled was because four of the students would have had border issues.