Bulwark Takes - Travel to America TANKING! Europe, Canada, Latin America Say “HELL NO!” to US

Episode Date: April 19, 2025

Tim Miller takes on the shocking drop in visitors from Europe, Central America, and beyond, explaining why Trump's America is now seen as a potential nightmare for international tourists. 

Bettering your business takes working with the best. With the James Hardy Alliance, you gain access to leads, training, networking, and support from the number one brand of siding in North America. Achieve new levels of success by joining the James Hardy Alliance today. Hey everybody, it's Tim Miller from The Bulwark. The Washington Post is reporting on some new data from the International Trade Administration, an agency under the U.S. Department of Commerce. I guess they haven't been

dozed yet. And what this is showing is that from almost all parts of the world, travel to the U.S. is way down. And I found this data fascinating because, you know, intuitively to me, it seemed likely that people from other countries might not want to come here. Either A, just not to support us because Trump's being an asshole, or B, because of fear of being hassled at customs at the airport, fear of, you know, who the hell knows, something funky happening with your visa, or you forget to declare something. And next thing you know, you're down here with me in Louisiana at the Natchez, you know, private prison and so uh between anger and fear like those seem like pretty good motivators to not come to the usa the question was like how long would that take right i mean a lot of people

plan their trips out ahead of time i'm i've already planned my europe trip i'm gonna see y'all in uh in july to our european viewers and so and I guess I could cancel it if something crazy happened, right? But I thought maybe it might take longer for us to kind of see the results of, you know, foreigners not wanting to come here to the US, but turns out it hasn't. And I just, I've been fascinated by these charts and trying to determine why the numbers look like they do in various parts of the world. And so I just wanted to break it down with y'all. All right. So first, if we are looking here by, I kind of break it down by different parts of the world, not really by continent, but not very surprising. The biggest drops are in the Caribbean and Central America. 24% drop from Central America. You know, if you

think there's even a 1% chance that you're going to end up in Sukkot in a hole because you had a tattoo with a crown on it, well, you probably don't want to come to America. And so it is sad, but not surprising that we've seen big, big drops, particularly from Central America. And, you know, you'd attribute that, I think, obviously both to anger and fear, but particularly to fear. 12% drop from Africa. I thought that was interesting. A little bit less from Asia. I guess you'd probably get more business travel from Asia. We'll see if that changes as the trade war with China kicks off.

Interesting here in Europe. Eastern Europe, basically no drop. So that is interesting. Western Europe, 17% drop in travel to America. So that to me is more about anger and more about saying, giving the big middle finger to the US of A for the folks in Western Europe. And we're going to break that down by country. The only area that is really up is the Middle East. And again, part of that is business travel. And Trump is doing some deals with countries in the Middle East. And we're hosting the fucking Live Saudi Golf Tour here.

So I guess that isn't surprising. Let's just drill down on a couple of countries in particular here. For example, we've got Germany down 28%. The Germans are having none of our bullshit. Another big drop, we've got Colombia. Colombia and Central America down 33%. So you see there, again, this combination of the Europeans, I think, wanting to punish america being upset at america deciding to use their travel dollars a different way and then you've got folks from um latin countries that have legitimate concerns about about coming here i know folks everywhere shit i mean you know the woman from we've now detained people from canada and and russia it's

not just you know venezuelan looking people or folks from Latin America, but obviously the threat is more acute. Note with Spain there, where there may be a little bit of an overlap of the two down 25%. You know, it's kind of sad. A couple who were very close with here in New Orleans, you know, one of their mothers is, one of their parents actually is for, both their parents are for Spain. And the grandmother, the abuela, comes to visit quite a lot. And we had this conversation a couple of weeks ago. Should she be coming here?

Should they be thinking about that differently? So it's just it's sad. It's tragic. It's not that surprising, though, to see those numbers dropping from Spain. You know, look, the data, this data in particular is preliminary. It's government data. We have seen other stories that we've talked about here, you know, particularly related to Canada and how we've seen just a precipitous drop in travel from Canada. Look, we have billions of dollars of lost revenue, lost economic activity in America. There are going to be, you know, hospitality industry organizations that really lose here. There are going to be individuals,

workers, you know, people that work on tips, people who own small businesses in these communities. Like a lot of people are going to suffer because of this. And there's really no sign it's going to change. Like I said, I think I probably expect this to get worse before it gets better. You have some countries have tightened travel advisories to the United States. There, you know, have been stories of weeks-long lockups of tourists. So people have fear. You know, all this stuff has happened briefly. So this is we're like looking at data that looks back in time in March. You know, this, all this stuff has happened briefly. So this is, we're like looking at data that looks back in time in March. You know, now we're here, April 19th. Does anybody think that April has been better than March? I sure don't. And so look, the economic impact on our country

is going to be real. And part of that I think is intentional I think that again some of these people aren't coming to America because of fear some of them is because they don't want to support the country and that's sad and it's unfortunate that we've got ourselves into this situation but it is certainly something that is deserved

and you know we've had a lot of these discussions which is unfortunate around you know here around the bulwark and around, you know, my family and friends about travel. As I mentioned, I, I tend to travel overseas this year. Um, I, you know, I'm not going to let, you know, a couple of jackbooted thugs at, you know, some airport customs, uh, prevent me from living my life. But, you know, it is not irrational at this point to, like, think about that kind of travel in a more cautious way. I mean, we were talking on the next level and JVL was saying, you know,

JVL can be a little paranoid for people to watch the next level podcast. But, you know, he's saying that it's it's just it's like it's 100 bucks to get a phone that's clean and so if you get up one of these customs agents that wants to be an asshole and start looking through your phone you know you can give them you can you know give them a phone that doesn't have all of your um social media on it all your email on it and just like even if that is a little over zealous like the fact that that is something that people are even considering just shows how far we've gone. There are going to be real economic consequences for that. There are already real human rights consequences when it comes to people that have been wrongfully detained.

And it's something that we're going to keep monitoring. But I know that here on YouTube, we've got a global audience and a lot of you are probably making these types of considerations, like thinking about whether it is even worth coming to America. If you're a big company and you're planning a conference, you're going to come down here to New Orleans or go to New York, go to Vegas, whatever. Is that worth it? Is it worth putting these people at risk? Is it worth all the procedures that you're going to have to put in place to do it? Maybe this year just do it on Zoom.

Maybe find a different location. you know i think just like across all these other vectors all the other things that have been happening i think they're going to be um you know real damage done um to people here in this country and that sucks but uh you know elections have consequences as they say okay there you go there's my easter weekend travel update for you you know we're gonna do travel maybe we should start doing weather and sports here, too. Old school news. Appreciate you all. Subscribe to the feed. We'll be seeing you soon.