United States has rejected most of the visa applications of Chinese applicants, who are business people and tourists.
The Washington’s newest round of tariffs has targeting US$34 billion worth of Chinese products has come into legal force.
Aside from trade and manufacturing, there are some tourism industry leaders say that the tourism will suffer due to the ongoing trade conflict, and many speculate that the United States may be more likely to reject visa applications from Chinese business people and tourists alike.
UDN reported that there are many tour groups applying for tourist visas to enter the U.S. this summer have already been rejected.
The report quotes a Chinese spokesperson for a bus rental company operating in the U.S. named Lu Qiang.
Lu says that his company was expecting a regular Summer with a high number of Chinese tourists, however an unusually high number of group visas have been rejected, and two thirds of the company’s buses have remained unused in what in generally the busiest season for business.
UDN also quotes the President of the American Chinese Culture Association, Lin Xu speaking on the large number of Chinese youth who attend summer camps in the U.S. every year, says this year nearly one-third of the young Chinese applicants have been denied entry.
In late May, it is reported that the U.S. was planning to impose limits on some visas, and begin to shorten the permitted length of stay for many visas that are granted.
The Chinese Embassy in the United States also recently posted a travel advisory for Chinese tourists coming to the U.S., which some news outlets have interpreted as a “warning against traveling to the U.S.”
The advisory from the Chinese Embassy states that robbery, theft, and shootings are common in some areas of the United States, and that Chinese visitors should remain alert. The timing of the notice, just days before the new tariffs went into effect has aroused a bit of speculation.
According to U.S. Department of Commerce Statistics, there are over 3 million Chinese tourists visited the U.S. last year with over 1 million entering in Los Angeles.
The number has been growing steadily for the past five years, and was expected to increase by about 7 percent in 2018 over 2017 numbers. However, because of the friction caused by the current trade conflict, analysts are predicting that those original estimates will not be reached this year.
As there is a trade-war between the U.S. and China, which first began to get serious. The U.S. consulates reportedly began to tauten their review process and limit the number of visas granted to Chinese applicants.
The Chinese tourists has travelled overseas 131 million times in 2017. There is 7 percent increase from the previous year, according to the China National Tourism Administration. With trade tensions escalating between China and the U.S., the industry leaders believe that the tourism numbers in Las Vegas could take a hit.
Gary Hufbauer, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, said a trade war’s biggest impact on Nevada would be a decline in wealthy Chinese travelers looking to gamble, an illegal activity in their home country.
On Friday, the United States plans to initiate $34 billion worth of tariffs on Chinese goods. China has announced plans to retaliate with tariffs on an equal amount of U.S. exports.
Two years ago, China had the sixth-largest share of international travelers in Las Vegas, with more than 233,000 visitors. But with the trade tension, the tourism number falls.
