The fallout from the Trump Administration's trade war with Canada, Mexico, and China is already having ramifications in the American tourism industry. An increasing number of Canadians, the most common visitors to the United States, are choosing to travel elsewhere. It's not hard to imagine that tourists from Mexico and China will be close behind. And with speculation that Trump's tariffs will expand to other countries like India, the tourism outlook in the US isn't great.
But tariffs and trade wars are not the only hurdle thrown in the path of the tourism sector in the United States by the Trump Administration. As part of their ongoing crackdown on immigration and border security, it has become increasingly difficult to get entry visas to the US, largely depending on what country travelers are applying from. Wait times to get the paperwork and the process completed has increased exponentially since Trump took office only two months ago.
Current estimates suggest that visitors from certain markets are now looking delays of up to two years or more to get travel visas. If this backlog continues, it's highly likely that increasing numbers of international tourists will abandon their plans to travel to the United States. Add that to the losses in Canadian tourism, and the American tourism sector is looking at declines in the billions of dollars.
This is especially bad timing as major international draws such as the FIFA World Cup and the Summer Olympics are coming to the United States. Cutting off tourists from other countries from attending these events will inevitably impact them in a negative fashion. While these new visa restrictions are being described by the Trump Administration as necessary for border security, critics claim that they unfairly target legitimate travelers while doing little to address the real problems.