In one stroke of his pen, Trump overturned and violated foundational American principles and values enshrined in the Constitution that bars favor or disfavor for any religion, that guarantees due process of law and that every person deserves equal justice under law.
His ban on travel, immigration and refugee asylum goes against American history and heritage as a nation built by immigrants, many who came as refugees fleeing war and persecution.
It ignores the many instances in American history when government violated its own principles, such as its original sins, the genocide of Native Americans and enslavement of Africans, going on to the Chinese Expulsion, the Japanese internment, the ramifications of turning back boatloads of Jews fleeing the Nazi Holocaust.
Trump would like to go back to those bad ol’ days.
And he did it on International Holocaust Remembrance Day. (Note: Trump’s statement on Friday failed to mention Jews or anti-Semitism, clearly the imprint of White Nationalist Steve Bannon who is the architect of America First and Trump’s main advisor.)
The Iranian Jews who fled the Ayotollahs and the Iraqi Jews expelled and found homes in Great Neck, can well understand the terror.
Trump, through his dismissive foreign policy tweets concerning NATO, nuclear weapons, climate change, indeed his entire America First policy (reinforced by the new UN Ambassador Nikki Haley in a defiant, “you have our back or we’re taking names” threat), his trade war launched with Mexico which likely will spread to China and others, his stance to pull the U.S. out of global climate action, will turn the U.S. into a pariah among nations, opening the way for China to step up influence in Mexico (a Pacific nation) and Africa, and Russia in the Middle East and Eastern Europe (after all, who will stop Putin’s push to establish a new Soviet Empire?).
The immoral, unconstitutional, anti-American, and ultimately self-destructive impacts of Trump’s Muslim Ban will not make the U.S. safer, but feeds into radical jihadists’ war cry against the Crusader west, not to mention the misery, anxiety it has imposed on thousands of immigrants and refugees who have already suffered the terror of war and the trauma of leaving homelands, putting them back into dangerous and desperate circumstance.
But I want to focus on the economic and social impacts of undermining travel and tourism, reviving anti-Americanism abroad and undermining the appeal of the United States as a destination.
Trump, with an America First philosophy, says he wants to expand economy and jobs, lower the trade deficit, but his policies already are guaranteed to damage one of the nation’s most vigorous, reliable engines of economic growth, jobs and social mobility, lifting minorities and women into the middle class, not to mention international goodwill: international travel.
Indeed, tourism is part of trade. Travelers coming into the United States are an “import,” and the dollars spent here go a long way to reducing the trade deficit.
How much? According to the US Travel Association, travel and tourism generates $2.1 trillion in economic output (2.7 percent of GDP) from domestic and international visitors (includes $927.9 billion in direct travel expenditures that spurred an additional $1.2 trillion in other industries through a ripple effect).
Travel expenditures support 15 million jobs (eight million directly); account for $221.7 billion in wages, and generate $141.5 billion in tax revenues to federal, state and local governments, levels that increased significantly over the past eight years, helping to lift the nation out of the Great Recession.
The value of international tourism goes beyond economic growth, jobs and tax receipts, though these are vitally important — but in essence literally brings peoples together. American travelers are unofficial ambassadors of American values and ideas, fostering good will. In the same vein, Americans who meet people face to face, where they are no longer “others” to be feared, but rather seen as human beings more similar than different.
Travelers are the first line of diplomacy, the first line or promoting peace and cooperation.
“President Trump’s travel ban on Iranians is a gift to the Islamic republic and its hard-line rulers,” writes Hadi Ghaemi, founder and executive director of the Campaign for Human Rights in Iran in the Washington Post. ”It will not deter terrorism on U.S. soil.”
In just his first few days occupying the Oval Office, Trump has managed to overturn the goodwill, and foment anti-Americanism.
A travel insurance company actually came out with an alert, “What to Be Aware of When Traveling in the Apocalypse; APRIL Outlines Simple Precautions for Traveling in a Post-Trump World.”
Trump has demonstrated that he intends to rule as he campaigned, by stoking fear and terror and insecurity — the hallmarks of a bully.
That may well serve another goal: keeping Americans insulated from the world so they are kept in darkness and ignorance and malleable to his policies.
That is not a recipe to “Make America Great Again,” nor keeping Americans safe.
That is a recipe for widening violence and terror as well as economic insecurity and turning the United States into a despised pariah in the global community.
And it will likely set dominos of economic collapse into motion.
