Justin Fox, Columnist

The Trump Effect on Tourism Is Overhyped

Jobs haven't suffered; foreign visitors are still spending money. That matters.

June 2, 2017 at 4:52 PM UTC

Justin Fox is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering business, economics and other topics involving charts. A former editorial director of the Harvard Business Review, he is author of “The Myth of the Rational Market.”

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People in the travel business have been warning that the Donald Trump administration's isolationist rhetoric and tougher border controls -- as evidenced by the just-unveiled State Department questionnaire that asks visa applicants for 15 years of biographical information and their social media handles for the past five years -- are going to discourage foreign travelers from coming to the U.S.

Some have even put forward evidence that this is already happening. Mobile app Foursquare, for example, reported last week that, among its users:

ForwardKeys, a travel data provider, reported Thursday that summer bookings for travel to the U.S. are down 3.5 percent over last year -- while bookings are up for all other major destinations.