Most US tourism is domestic, the effect of a 12% drop in international tourism arrivals is a rounding error even for the US tourism industry as a whole, much less the US economy overall (tourism is 3% of total, compared to ~10% in other major tourist destinations like France).
Emoting and wishful thinking is exactly right, and I say that as a Canadian who is participating in this boycott. I'm not doing it to hurt the US economy, because I know it won't matter one bit even if we all stay away. It'll hurt some border destinations, but will hardly register in most places. Facts are facts.
Tourism is a rounding error.
Euros buying US arms are a rounding error.
The benefits of a relationship with XYZ country is a rounding error.
Any change we want to make to improve healthcare affordability is a rounding error.
Everything around discussing improving housing affordability is a rounding error.
The US economy is driven in part by coal which employs 40,000 people. Rounding errors have impacts and are part of policy discussion all the time. It only gets shut down with 'rounding error' when it's referring to average people issues without clout.
Calling things rounding errors is the US equivalent speech as russian style apathy propaganda.
It's not just tourism. Economically, the US does not depend on the rest of the world nearly as much as any other developed country. Trade (exports and imports) as percentage of GDP is the lowest of all major economies, by far. This is not up for discussion it's a fact you must ground everything else in.
Having established that, you know the firm upper bound on economic (not cultural or political or podcast-topic-generating) impact that international tourism boycott will have on the US. Same for putting tariffs on US goods. If you ignore this, you'll be surprised by how little this matters in the end, economically. Conversely, if you keep yourself firmly grounded in reality you can still in fact be against these policies on different grounds - on the fact that over time their cumulative economic and non-economic effect will hurt, on the fact that a lot of the reasons for these policies are fanciful nationalist bullshit (no, manufacturing jobs aren't and won't be coming back). But don't expect us staying away from your country, or putting a tariff on your shitty cars or cucumbers or whatever, to make a difference. Why is that controversial?
The foreign tourism segment is 20% of the size of the US ag industry. Saying this is a rounding error is ridiculous. 10% of US tourism employment would be 1.5 million people employed as a result of foreign tourism (total tourism employment is 15 million).
To say this a tiny unimportant segment that isn't worth talking about is ridiculous. Again especially considering the consideration the Republicans give tiny industries like coal which employs 40,000.
It's worth talking about a segment that employs 1.5 million in a discussion about 92k job loses.
My bad talking about employment on a thread about job cuts and giving background that a rounding error that doesn't matter is still 1.5 million US jobs. The US isn't 'too big to fail'. Death by a thousand cuts is still death. Ignoring each cut because they aren't important enough (only 1.5 million out of the 15 million travel workers) or poignant is dumb.
Emoting and wishful thinking is exactly right, and I say that as a Canadian who is participating in this boycott. I'm not doing it to hurt the US economy, because I know it won't matter one bit even if we all stay away. It'll hurt some border destinations, but will hardly register in most places. Facts are facts.