What did Donald Trump do today?

He said it's "no big deal" if his policies cripple a major American industry.

Trump's approach to immigration enforcement has led to a number of high-profile horror stories of tourists with valid visas visiting the United States only to be detained, jailed, strip-searched, interrogated, and deported over minor procedural questions. That, plus his overt antagonism of Canada, the country that sends the most tourist dollars into the United States, has dealt a body blow to the American tourism industry. 

Today, at a signing ceremony for executive orders (which he confused with legislation), Trump was asked about the issue.

REPORTER: There's been a steep drop-off in international travel to the United States. It was down 12% from last month, down even more from Western Europe. Why do you think there are fewer people suddenly who want to travel to the United States?

TRUMP: Well that may be a little nat—there's a little nationalism there, I guess, perhaps, but it's not a big deal. 

Actually, it is a big deal. The American tourism industry is massive, and accounts for roughly 19 million jobs in the United States. Even a small decline in "front-line" jobs in the hospitality industry is likely to cause a spike in unemployment and a wave of business failures. That economic hit would then be propagated through the industries that supply goods and services to them. There's ample historic precedent for this kind of economic contagion: one of the events that kicked off the Great Depression was the collapse of Florida's nascent tourism industry.

Trump knows a thing or two about all this: he struggled, mostly in vain, not to lose money with his various forays into the tourism industry. He famously bankrupted casinos six times over, but he also ran an upstart airline (rebranded—briefly—as the "Trump Shuttle") into the ground. He tried to start a travel business, GoTrump.com, which folded almost immediately.

He even struggled to make money on the Trump International Hotel, a site a few blocks from the Capitol, in spite of what are probably the biggest advantages a hotelier ever had. He was, during his presidency, both tenant and landlord (since the site itself was owned by the government), and he forced Republicans and those who wanted to do business with then to pay top dollar for rooms and events there, whether or not they ever used them. Saudi Arabia's government spent hundreds of thousands of dollars there in a successful bid to win billions of dollars in arms sales requiring Trump's approval.

In most of those cases, Trump was actually losing other people's money. In fact, he actually profited off his casino bankruptcies, thanks to a tax loophole that let him write off hundreds of millions of dollars of other people's losses.

Responding further to the reporter's question today, Trump made a rambling and confusing reference to the strength of the dollar:

But with the dollar being where it is, cause—you know, China would always fight for having a low dollar. Uh, Japan would always fight for having, a low dollar, meaning a low yen, or in the case of China the yuan. Uh, they'd always want to have China would always I'd speak to President Xi a lot [sic], I'd say it's unfair that you—you know, that—your yuan is so low, I'd call up, uh, a great man, Prime Minister "Abee" [Abe], great man, Shinzo, who was, uh, unfortunately assassinated, and I used to tell you he was a good friend of mine, I used to say Shinzo, you gotta, you can't let your yen go down, it makes it very hard for us to sell tractors, it makes it very hard to us to get, uh, tourism, and our dollar is, uh, a little bit on the low side, and that means that a lot of tourism's gonna come in. But I could see a little bit nationalism at work.

It's true that a relatively weak currency helps attract foreign tourism, assuming there aren't other reasons tourists might stay away. (American dollars go very far in Russia, for example, but it's not a popular tourist destination at the moment.) Governments with the power to do so often take steps to nudge the strength of their currencies one way or another on world markets, but that is not why the dollar is weak at the moment.

Why does this matter?

• It absolutely is a big deal if American businesses fail and jobs are lost, and no president who thinks otherwise is fit for office. 
  

• Policies that make wealthy foreign tourists with valid visas afraid to visit the United States for fear of mistreatment by the American government are stupid policies, full stop.