“Broad-brush policies like this people barrier impede growth and certainly do not accelerate it,” David Kotok, chief investment officer at Cumberland Advisors, wrote in an e-mail. “Trump has now set back the positive elements of global exchange in both goods and services.”
Foreign tourists provide critical support to the U.S. economy. In 2015, they spent roughly $199 billion on items ranging from hotel rooms and restaurant meals to plane tickets and amusement parks. That spending counts as exports. Travel and tourism made up nearly 9 percent of U.S. exports that year.
Some economists say they worry that Trump’s order could create an echo of the post-9/11 period, when travel to the United States plunged, in part because of much tighter security. In the 10 years that followed — a period the travel industry recalls ruefully as the “lost decade” — the U.S. share of overseas travel fell by nearly one-third, according to the Council on Foreign Relations. That cost the U.S. economy $500 billion.
“The message got around the world that the United States was an unfriendly country to visit — that it’s a big hassle to visit there,” said Edward Alden, a senior fellow at the Council and author of “The Closing of the American Border,” a book about U.S. security after 9/11.
Given the disruptions at U.S. airports caused by Trump’s immigration order, which were widely covered by television news around the world, “it’s that story all over again,” Alden said.
Many high-tech companies have also opposed Trump’s order because they say it blunts their competitive edge in recruiting high-skilled talent.
~The Denver Post
