Tag: las vegas
'Trump Slump': Tariffs And Imperial Attitude Are Killing Tourism Industry

'Trump Slump': Tariffs And Imperial Attitude Are Killing Tourism Industry

President Donald Trump is so disastrously incompetent he once managed to bankrupt a casino in Atlantic City. Now, from the Oval Office, he’s trying to do it again—in Las Vegas.

In June 2025, Las Vegas welcomed 400,000 fewer visitors than in June 2024—a more than 11 percent nosedive. International arrivals plunged, as did hotel occupancy.

This didn’t happen by accident. Trump has spent months antagonizing America’s northern neighbor—and a key Vegas tourism source. He suggested Canada should become the 51st U.S. state and called its prime minister at the time “Governor Justin Trudeau of the Great State of Canada.” He later claimed he wasn’t “trolling,” doubling down that statehood would make Trump’s tariffs “totally disappear.”

Canada’s new Prime Minister Mark Carney fired back, saying his country “is not for sale” and dismissing Trump’s fantasy as laughable and offensive. Even Trump’s own ambassador to Canada warned the rhetoric was unprecedentedly toxic for relations. And in tourism, words have consequences. Canada is America’s No. 1 source of foreign visitors. Insult them enough, and they stop coming.

Trump’s near-blanket tariffs on Canadian goods turned the insults into policy, triggering a full-blown trade war. The result: Car crossings were down 37 percent year-over-year in July, and air arrivals dropped 26 percent. Duty-free sales along the border have been cut nearly in half, wiping out millions in spending. Indeed, each one percent drop in international travel costs the U.S. $1.8 billion in export revenue per year—money that fuels jobs and generates tax revenues. July 2025 marked the seventh straight month of plunging traffic, with surveys showing Canadians now feel distinctly unwelcome.

And when the biggest slice of your foreign tourism market dries up, the ripple is felt everywhere. In July, arrivals from Germany were down 14.7 percent compared with last July. Arrivals from China dropped by 13.8 percent and from Switzerland by 12.7 percent. Tour operators abroad now steer customers toward anywhere but Trump’s America. Tourism revenue is projected to fall from $181 billion in 2024 to $169 billion in 2025, a $12.5 billion-hit to the economy.

And that might just be the tip of the iceberg. A Reuters analysis of the underlying data suggests the tourism slump could cost up to $71 billion in the United States’ gross domestic product.

In Las Vegas, the damage is personal. Empty casinos mean shorter shifts, slashed hours, and layoffs. Ted Pappageorge, secretary-treasurer of the Culinary Union, calls the city’s waning tourism the “Trump slump.”

“If you tell the whole world that they’re not welcome, they’re not going to come,” he told Time magazine. “The lifeblood for Las Vegas is Southern California. What folks are telling our members is that the raids and crazy tariffs and this uncertainty, [are causing] people to pull back.”

In a late July post on Truth Social, Trump called the U.S. “the ‘hottest’ and most respected Country anywhere in the World.”

The numbers tell a different story. From struggling casinos to struggling cities, his legacy is the same: reckless mismanagement, xenophobia, and empty chairs where excitement used to sit. The lights on the Vegas Strip still flicker, but thanks to Trump, the seats are getting empty.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos

An Honest Remark At Nevada Rally

Trump Made One Honest Remark At Nevada Rally -- And Media Missed It

Donald Trump's Las Vegas rally on Sunday included his typical MAGA hallmarks: vastly overstated attendance, incoherent rambling about electric boats and sharks, and an almost unbroken stream of false claims about his accomplishments in the White House.

But he also did something unusual. Between his lies about the Black unemployment rate, jobs created under President Joe Biden, and his calling fallen veterans “suckers” and “losers,” Trump slipped in a moment of truth.

After appearing to express concern about his supporters broiling in the triple-digit heat, Trump quickly made it clear that their health wasn’t his concern.

“We need every voter. I don’t care about you. I just want your vote,” he said.

Trump followed this up by saying that the media would jump on this statement.

“See now,” Trump said, “the press will take that and they’ll say ‘he said a horrible thing.’”

But that was also a lie, since the press is long past actually reporting what Trump says at his rallies.

As might be expected, Fox News doesn't mention the statement and instead focuses on how Trump is promising that he won’t charge taxes on tips. Apparently, the solution to America’s tipping problem is to encourage more tipping.

Buf if Fox didn’t acknowledge Trump’s “I don’t care about you” sentiment, surely CNN would, right? Wrong. CNN’s coverage of the rally consisted of a lengthy article that only cites the same line about tipping.

Similarly, neither The Washington Post nor The New York Times mentioned the comment in their reporting.

And none of them discussed what has become, believe it or not, a standard part of Trump's rally speech for months:

You might think that, over the course of his campaign, someone might have pointed out to Trump that electric boats are common, from massive and pricey yachts all the way down to the electric trolling motors used by many fishers. But then again, why bother introducing reality into Trump’s rallies now?

Even if the media refuses to cover Trump’s usual bits, it might seem that at least one corporate outlet would cover the part of the speech where Trump reads items from a Cheesecake Factory menu.

Trump’s rally speeches never get any better or make any more sense. In fact, they seem to make less sense over time as he forgets key portions of his stories and wanders into pointless asides. But it doesn’t matter, because 99 percent of what’s said gets left on the cutting room floor by a media that seems dedicated to cherry-picking sentence fragments to make Trump seem halfway intelligible.

The actual speech wasn’t just filled with moments like battery vs. shark, but it also consisted of a series of false claims that went unchecked and uncorrected in national media coverage.

At least the Nevada Current did a decent job reporting on Trump’s staggering list of lies and some of his jaw-dropping moments of dissonance.

“You’re headed to World War III. You are closer now to World War III than you’ve ever been, and this is no longer army tanks going back and forth shooting—World War II, World War … There are nuclear weapons the likes of which and the power of which has never, ever been seen before. So again I want to thank you all. I want to thank all the celebrities for being here. We have great celebrities.”

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

With Changing Climate, Let's Not Expect Green Lawns In Las Vegas

With Changing Climate, Let's Not Expect Green Lawns In Las Vegas

One can well understand the allure of the American Southwest. Shirtsleeves in February. Natural beauty under a big starry sky. But as the region's water shortage approaches crisis levels, newcomers — and old-timers — may have to give up the idea that the good life includes a lush green lawn.

Las Vegas isn't Buffalo without the snow. Grass grows in Buffalo with minimal effort. Not so in Las Vegas, set in the Mojave Desert.

Grass needs lots of water, and the region's supplies are so strained that Las Vegas is sending out contractors to dig up "nonfunctional turf." The city defines "nonfunctional" as grass kept only for its good looks — in practice, grass along streets or at commercial sites.

Over 40 million people rely on the stressed Colorado River for water. Water levels in the river's two big reservoirs, Lake Powell and Lake Mead, are at historic low levels. Meanwhile, the other source that has provided water forever, underground aquifers, are drying up. Climate change and growing populations are making shortages worse.

As a result, states in the Southwest are facing a hard reality: Greenswards and gurgling fountains may become part of an unrealistic past.


Where water is scarcer, its distribution must be tightly managed. Layers of federal and local agencies must make the hard decisions about who gets how much water and for what. They have no choice but to tighten the rules.

That's why being rich and famous in the Southern California city of Calabasas still doesn't guarantee you a green lawn. Residents there are now limited to watering only eight minutes one day a week.

There's a reason golf was invented in Scotland. The weather there is cool and rainy, and that's what makes grass happy.

Not so in the Sonoran Desert, where Phoenix happens to be located. Phoenix is hot, dry and booming with new arrivals taking showers and flushing toilets.

And so it makes sense to ask why the Phoenix area has 165 golf courses. Having formed an alliance to defend their water allocations, the owners argue that year-round golf is important to the region's economy. That may be so, but couldn't they change the idea of what a golf course looks like?

Arizona farms use over half of the available water. Now getting less water than in previous years, they, too, have banded together. Perhaps the time has come for some of them to stop growing thirsty crops like cotton in the desert.

And what about homeowners? Arizona's cities and suburbs are still largely shielded from drastic cutbacks in water use, but a green lawn may no longer be in the cards.

The good news is that desert vegetation has its own charms. This Old House aired an interesting episode on landscaping a front yard in Phoenix. The result was largely a hardscape of pavement and rocks with spots of desert-friendly mesquite, lantana and, of course, cactus. One plant, the red yucca, offered dramatic blooms eight months a year.

No, it wasn't the opulent green carpets of Connecticut. On the other hand, you don't get eight months of bloom in Connecticut.

A reduced Colorado River has ignited new worries not directly tied to irrigation. Lake Powell has been a source of hydropower. Its water level has fallen so low that it soon may no longer be able to produce electricity serving millions of Westerners. Lake Powell is now down to 27 percent of capacity.

Mother Nature is a disciplinarian. If you want a lot of rain, move to Hawaii or Louisiana or Mississippi. Otherwise, learn to love the desert the way the Creator made it. Really, there's little choice in the matter.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

Electionomics: How Donald Trump’s Union Busting Is Killing The American Dream In Las Vegas And Beyond

Electionomics: How Donald Trump’s Union Busting Is Killing The American Dream In Las Vegas And Beyond

Published with permission from AlterNet.

Union busting is never pretty. But in the case of Donald Trump, it’s especially ugly. The Republican presidential nominee has campaigned on promises to make America great again by bringing back good jobs. But in Las Vegas, a company he owns with casino mogul Phillip Ruffin has worked methodically to keep hundreds of its own employees from achieving the American dream.

For the past 18 months, the Trump International Hotel has waged an anti-union campaign in response to an organizing drive by workers. The effort to quash the union has led the National Labor Relations Board to issue a complaint against the Trump Hotel, alleging that the hotel fired union supporters and interrogated and intimidated employees.

In late July, the NLRB denied a final appeal by the hotel challenging last December’s vote by workers to be represented by the Culinary & Bartenders Union. More than a month later, the company is still refusing to recognize the union and negotiate a contract.

When Trump unveiled his economic plan, he promised that “no one will gain more from these proposals than low- and middle-income Americans.” Nowhere in the plan did he mention the right of workers to organize, or the crucial role unions played in building the great American middle class that he pledges to restore.

While Trump may have been silent about his attitude toward unions, the actions of his company in Las Vegas speak volumes about how a President Trump would deal with workers who exercise their right to organize. If Trump has no qualms about sanctioning a union-bashing campaign conducted under the intense national glare of a presidential campaign, imagine how he would act as chief executive when confronted with decisions about the basic rights of workers.

In fact, there is no need to imagine: Trump’s record speaks for itself. In the last decade, Trump’s companies were cited for two dozen violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act. According to the International Business Times, the Trump Organization paid almost half a million dollars to “settle a claim with nearly 300 Los Angeles golf club employees in a class-action suit alleging unpaid wages and age discrimination, among other offenses.”

Meanwhile, according to an investigation by the USA Today Network, “at least 60 lawsuits, along with hundreds of liens, judgments, and other government filings…document people who have accused Trump and his businesses of failing to pay them for their work.”

Then there is Trump’s practice of bringing in foreign workers, as he did at Trump Plaza in the 1980s, displacing American construction workers. Trump’s rhetoric distorts the reality that when given the opportunity to shave a few bucks, he will also take the low road of low-wage union avoidance and contracting out to foreign interests.

The anti-union campaign in Las Vegas was preceded by a similar effort in Chicago, where the Trump International Hotel and Tower vigorously fought an organizing drive by the hotel workers union. During the presidential race, Trump has spoken favorably of right-wing “right-to-work” laws, which weaken the best job security protections workers have—a union contract—by preventing employers and employees from negotiating an agreement that requires all workers who receive the benefits of a collective bargaining agreement to pay their share of the costs of representing them. So-called right-to-work laws force unions to represent every eligible employee, whether or not he or she pays dues or fees, thereby allowing workers to pay nothing and still get all the benefits of union membership.

Trump doubled down on his anti-labor stance by picking Mike Pence as his running mate. As reported in the American Prospect, Pence has been an opponent of minimum wage increases, prevailing wages and even the right of local governments to offer more generous wages or benefits than those provided by the state.

All of this should give pause to working- and middle-class voters thinking about casting a ballot for the Trump/Pence ticket in November. Trump may talk a good game when it comes to the economic woes facing tens of millions of Americans, but actions speak louder than words. A vote for Trump would be a vote for the privileged class in which he has spent his entire life. What’s happening in Vegas at the Trump Hotel would surely not stay in Vegas.

Julie Gutman Dickinson is a partner with the union-side law firm, Bush Gottlieb.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

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