Route 66, cutting through the heart of the United States from Illinois to California, offers drivers one of the world’s most magnificent road trips.
This historic highway came to symbolise freedom, opportunity and optimism in pursuit of the American Dream almost a century ago as desperate migrants headed west during the Great Depression, then emerged as an icon of the country’s influential culture in books, films and songs. The road embodies a spirit of carefree adventure in a nation that worshipped cars and liberty – and is loved by tourists as they sweep through bustling cities, glorious scenery and kitschy roadside stops.
Steve Dalley, a reader of this newspaper from the Isle of Wight, had been looking forward to spending three weeks with a friend driving along Route 66. Their trip – postponed by the pandemic – was slated for September. Now he has cancelled in protest against a president who is brazenly shredding those values of democracy and freedom epitomised by that famous road.
“I will not set foot in America while the numpty [Donald] Trump and his acolytes are still in control,” he wrote in a letter published earlier this month. “We can all do our bit to hurt the US even if it unfortunately doesn’t just hit the ‘Make America Great Again’ crowd.”
This might seem a self-harming reaction to Trump’s regime. The loss of two British holidaymakers makes minimal impact, after all, to a tourist industry that hosted at least seventy million visitors last year. Yet Steve seems far from alone in coming to this decision: official figures show a sharp drop last month in foreign visitors to the US, which plunged almost 12 per cent over the previous year.
Travel from several key countries – including Colombia, Germany, Spain, Ireland and Norway – shrank more than one-fifth. And this data does not yet include Canada and Mexico, which account for almost half of US visitors – with indications of even bigger falls from these neighbouring nations amid the toxic rhetoric spewing out of the White House.
Here is the world showing its instinctive response to a country that proclaims itself a bastion of democracy and free speech yet has suddenly started illegally sending residents to a prison hellhole in El Salvador. A place where foreign students are seized off the streets by plainclothes officials and stuffed into detention centres after showing support for Palestinians, where hundreds of visas are being revoked for involvement in legitimate protests or posting on social media against Israeli war crimes. Terrified students in Texas told the BBC of hiding in homes, scared to even step outside to buy groceries, while colleges say researchers are refusing to return.
Why, after all, would Canadians want to go on holiday to a country whose president demands they capitulate to his grotesque rule by becoming the 51st US State while insulting their own leaders? Why would Europeans want to visit a nation whose administration are betraying the fight for freedom in Ukraine, sucking up to our enemies in the Kremlin, demanding Greenland and promoting the far-right on our own continent? Why would Asians or Mexicans want to visit the land that has launched damaging trade wars against them? And why would Australians want to visit a country that just detained, deported and reportedly insulted one of its citizen with a valid visa who left his job, partner and child for a two-day trip home to scatter his sister’s ashes.
There has been a spate of similar stories about aggressive questioning, denials of admission and detentions for visa irregularities following Trump’s immigration crackdown. “I was a British tourist trying to leave the US. Then I was detained, shackled and sent to an immigration detention centre” read one Guardian headline over an interview with a graphic artist whose trip of a lifetime ended with being locked up for 19 days. This is not the ideal advertisement for American tourism.
Meanwhile the Committee to Protect Journalists has issued a safety bulletin for reporters heading to the US while several European countries have had to update travel advice for transgender and non-binary citizens (given a similar reactionary shift here, however, perhaps they might soon have to do the same for Britain).
Consumer boycotts are blunt, imperfect and often ineffective instruments. People making a decision to avoid visiting the US and spending their cash there – whether fuelled by fear of heavy-handed border guards or rage against a repellent regime – will not hurt the billionaire oligarchs in power but might harm decent folks working hard to make a living.
Yet bear in mind Goldman Sachs has warned that “foreign boycotts of US products… driven by a pullback in foreign tourism” could cost the country £90bn. The tourist industry supports 15 million US jobs. And for all the culture war froth, Trump’s election triumph was built on concerns over the cost of living while claiming he would make America great again.
square ADAM BOULTON
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Read MoreSo collective recoil from the President’s warped view of the world might just make a difference. There are, of course, many worse-governed and far more repressive nations with thriving tourism industries. But we expect better from the land of the free and the world’s most influential democracy. Besides, how else can ordinary people send a signal that even the country’s closest friends feel repulsed by Trump – especially when watching their own leaders crawl to the White House and pander to the President’s overblown ego in a desperate effort to deflect disastrous policies?
The US remains an extraordinary nation, filled with incredible natural beauty and so many welcoming people. I have enjoyed some of my finest holidays in states such as California, Maine and Vermont. But having visited more than 100 other nations, I have been fortunate to see many other hospitable, intriguing and stunning parts of our planet.
Right now, perhaps these offer more suitable tourism destinations than a country being despoiled by a malign president who is inflicting such damage to his country’s reputation. So maybe get your kicks anywhere else than Route 66.
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