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.

 

The Trump Slump

Going to the U.S.?

    You may not have read the recent article found under the headline announcing that the Canadian Girl Guides were no longer traveling to the U.S. and you may not realize there are 70,000 of them along with about 20,000 guiders. There have been other recent articles about the cancellation of school trips which involve even larger numbers. Students from Toronto and Windsor will not be viewing cherry blossoms this year and the decline in visits to the United States is now being called the “Trump Slump” - an unintended, but predictable consequence of the various restrictions on travel imposed by the Trump administration.

   Many in Canada are probably not visiting because of the Canadian loonie not the American ones. School trips are being cancelled out of fear that an entire busload may be turned around because a few swarthy students are aboard. Others are opting out because of the stories of visitors now being more rigorously questioned and delayed or detained at airports.  Let’s face it: the border agent inhaling your exhaust at a bleak border crossing, seeing your sunny smile and hearing that you are going to golf on Hilton Head is hardly likely to be more welcoming these days.

  Perhaps you deprived yourself of time in the sun during March Break because you are a principled person who does not wish to support, in any way, the current regime. An article in the Toronto Star suggests that you should boycott, take a stance and not go. But, if you are still undecided about heading south you should read a recent article in Maclean’s which makes a good case that such boycotting doesn’t work.

Sources:

“Girl Guides of Canada Suspend Trips to U.S. Citing Border Concerns,” Hina Alam, Toronto Star,  March 13, 2017

“Time to Boycott Vacations to the U.S.” Mark Bulgutch, Toronto Star, Jan. 30,2017

“There’s no need to start a campaign. Just make a personal decision to avoid the United States whenever you can as long as the cruelty persists.”

“They’re Not Worth Doing, They’re Not Worth Opposing, and They Won’t Change Much,” Nick Taylor-Vaisey Maclean’s, March 10, 2017.

“Toronto Schools to Cease Field Trips to U.S.” Craig S. Smith, The New York Times, March 24, 2017.

‘Like 9/11 All Over Again’: Canadians Grow Fearful of Crossing the Border,” Catherine Porter, The New York Times, Feb. 13, 2017.

“The Trump Slump? Tourists say They're Scared to visit the United States, Barbara Demick, Los Angeles Times, Mar. 12, 2017,

“An economic consulting firm that has crunched the numbers from various airline and travel booking websites projects that the U.S. will lose 6.3 million visits by the end of next year, which translates into $10.8 billion in spending. What the firm, Tourism Economics of Wayne, Pa., is calling “Trump-induced losses” could affect an estimated 90,000 Americans whose jobs are directly or indirectly dependent on tourism.”

“It doesn’t take very much uncertainty or antipathy to influence decisions away from a given travel destination,” said Adam Sacks, the firm’s president. “Ultimately, destinations and companies are in the business of building a brand and a message that is welcoming .… All the ‘America first’ rhetoric in various policy areas like trade, diplomacy and immigration is conveying the exact opposite.’’

“Among the cities that stand to lose the most are New York, Miami, Los Angeles and San Francisco. New York expects to lose 300,000 foreign tourists this year, a big worry because it is foreigners who drop the big money, spending about four times as much as domestic tourists, according to officials.” [these quotations are all from the Demick article cited above].