← Bulwark Takes
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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 doged yet. And what this is showing is that from almost all parts of the world, travel to the US 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. 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 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've already planned my Europe trip. I'm going to see y'all in. 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 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 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 Latin countries that have legitimate concerns about, about coming here. I know folks everywhere should, 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 of their parents are for Spain. And the grandmother, the abuela, comes to visit quite a lot and we had to have this conversation a couple 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, 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 hospitality industry organizations that really lose here. They're 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 have been stories of weeks long lockups of tourists. So people have fear. 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. Right? I mean, 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 intend to travel overseas this year. You know, I'm not going to let you know, know a couple of jackbooted thugs at, you know, some airport customs 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 a hundred 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 social media on it, all your email on it. And just like, even if that is a little overzealous, 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 gonna, we're gonna keep monitoring. But I know that here on YouTube we've got a, we got a global audience and a lot of you are probably, you know, making these types of considerations, like thinking about whether it is even worth coming to America. You know, if you're, 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? You know, 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. I think there are going to be real damage done to people here in this country, and that sucks. But elections have consequences, as they say. Okay, there you go. There's my Easter weekend travel update for you. We're going to 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.