YCLOAK

From a Peruvian trout farm manager to the head of an Indonesian meatball company, a list of 500 women entrepreneurs in emerging markets was launched Thursday to challenge the stereotype of a typical company boss and inspire women globally.

The “Foundation 500” list features the portraits and careers of 500 female entrepreneurs in 11 emerging markets where women are often refused the same access to education, financial services and bank loans as men.

The list, an initiative of humanitarian agency CARE and the nonprofit H&M Foundation, mirrors the Fortune 500 list of U.S. companies but highlights unusual chief executives, ranging from a Zambian woman who set up a mobile drug store to a woman in Jordan who set up a temporary tattoo studio.

Create role models

Karl-Johan Persson, CEO of Swedish retailer H&M, said the project was designed to create role models for women in emerging markets and challenging perceptions in developed countries of business leaders.

“The entrepreneur is our time’s hero and a role model for many young but the picture given of who is an entrepreneur is still very homogenous and many probably associate it to men from the startup world,” Persson said in an email.

He said all the women in the list had made an incredible effort.

“But one that stands out to me is Philomene Tia, a multi-entrepreneur from the Ivory Coast who has overcome setbacks such as war and being a refugee, and who has, in spite of it, always returned to the entrepreneurship to create a better future and a strong voice in society.”

Buses, fish and tattoos

Tia is the owner of a bus company in the Ivory Coast, a chain of beverage stores, a hotel complex, and a cattle breeding operation.

“I often tell other women that it is the force inside you and your brains that will bring you wherever you want to go. I mean, I started with nothing and I don’t even speak proper French, but look at me now,” she was quoted on the project’s website www.foundation500.com.

The women featured are from Indonesia, the Philippines, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Peru, Guatemala, Jordan, Zambia, Burundi, the Ivory Coast and Yemen.

One of the women portrayed is Andrea Gala, 20, a trout farm manager in Peru and president of the women-only Trout Producers Association.

“This business has worked out so well for us now we don’t depend on our fields anymore, which is hard work and often badly paid,” Gala said in a report on the project.

“With the association we want to open a restaurant one day, next to the trout farm, so we can attract more visitors. We want to turn the area into a tourist zone, where people can come and relax and enjoy our restaurant with trout-based dishes.”

The H&M Foundation, privately funded by the Persson family that founded retailer H&M, said this was part of a women’s empowerment program started with CARE in 2014 in Latin America, Asia and Africa.

As part of this project H&M Foundation Manager Diana Amini said about 100,000 women in 20 countries had received between 2,000-15,000 euros in seed capital and skills training to start and expand businesses.

In Burundi, the average rate of increase in income among women in the program was 203 percent in the three years to the end of 2016, she said.
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Mexican sugar producers want an investigation into suspected dumping in Mexico by U.S. fructose producers even after a U.S.-Mexico deal on access to the U.S. sugar market, the head of the Mexican sugar industry group said Wednesday.

The sugar lobby last month said it had asked the Mexican economy ministry to investigate U.S. high-fructose corn syrup imports, saying there was evidence of dumping.

Mexico Tuesday conceded to U.S. demands for changes in the terms of Mexican access to the lucrative U.S. sugar market, but U.S. sugar producers refused to endorse the deal.

The agreement would avert possible steep U.S. import duties on Mexican sugar and had been seen as lowering the risk of Mexico slapping its own import duties on U.S. high-fructose corn syrup as a retaliatory measure.

“This issue with the U.S. sugar industry is not over,” Juan Cortina, the head of Mexican sugar industry group (CNIAA), told reporters at an event in Mexico City where he said the group would keep pressing for a fructose probe in Mexico.

​The sweetener trade has been a longstanding source of disputes between the two countries that are preparing to start talks with Canada to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Mexican Economy Minister Ildefonso Guajardo on June 1 said he was reviewing the request by the Mexican sugar lobby to initiate the investigation.
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Small-business owners who install solar panels or help customers use clean energy don’t seem fazed by President Donald Trump’s plan to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris climate accord, saying they expect demand for their services will still keep growing.

They’re confident in two trends they see: A growing awareness and concern about the environment, and a desire by consumers and businesses to lower their energy costs.

“It’s an economic decision people are making, although it also makes environmental sense,” said Suvi Sharma, CEO of Solaria, a Fremont, California-based company that designs and sells solar energy panel systems.

Trump said he was putting U.S. interests ahead of international priorities in leaving the agreement that would, among other things, require the U.S. and other countries to report greenhouse gas emissions. The U.S. is the world’s second-largest emitter of carbon after China, and carbon is one of the gases that scientists cite as a key factor in global warming.

Reaction to withdrawal split

Many of the nation’s largest companies opposed Trump’s move, and some have already committed to reducing emissions and are spending billions to do it.

Small business advocacy groups are split over the impact of a U.S. withdrawal. The Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council doesn’t believe Trump’s action will hurt the United States.

“Even without the U.S.’s formal participation in the pact, we believe our nation will continue to lead in carbon reduction and clean energy,” said Karen Kerrigan, CEO of the group. “The market is demanding as much and the private sector and investment are responding.”

But the Small Business Majority, which has supported limits on greenhouse gas emissions as a way to help the environment and the economy, said the U.S. needs government policies that “promote the development of renewable energy and the implementation of energy efficiency standards.”

“America’s entrepreneurs understand that the future of our economy and the job growth associated therewith depends upon policies that move us forward, not backward,” said John Arensmeyer, the group’s CEO.

The American Sustainable Business Council also warned that global warming would hurt companies, giving them “a chaotic and unsustainable future of business disruptions from rising seas and changing weather patterns.”

Whether business owners outside energy-related industries are likely to support the Paris accord may depend on how much they’re worried about climate change, and whether they’re concerned about saving on energy bills.

Demand, awareness growing

A private equity firm that invests in clean energy companies doesn’t expect Trump’s action to have much impact on U.S. companies whose business is reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Neil Auerbach, CEO of Hudson Clean Energy in Teaneck, New Jersey, said the U.S. has been able to move away from carbon fuels with more use of natural gas and renewables.

Arcadia Power, which helps consumers and companies switch to wind and solar power for their electricity, has seen orders rise 5 percent from its usual pace since Trump’s announcement last week, says Ryan Nesbitt, president of the Washington, D.C.-based company. Demand was particularly strong for the electricity supply plans the company offers through solar power producers.

“They sold out over the weekend. We’re scrambling to get more,” Nesbitt said. Some customers who signed up for Arcadia’s service said they were doing so in response to Trump’s announcement, Nesbitt says.

State and local environmental laws, which can be tougher than federal statutes and regulations, have contributed to the growth of small businesses in the energy sector. So companies that help businesses track and report their carbon and other emissions shouldn’t see their business disappear if the U.S. isn’t part of the Paris accord.

At ERA Environmental Management Solutions, whose customers include companies that use paints and other chemicals, “nobody’s coming out and telling us they’re going to stop doing a project,” owner Gary Vegh said.

But Vegh, whose company is based in Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania, says companies are also reacting to changing perspectives.

“Each generation is getting more educated about the environment,” Vegh said. “Even preschool and elementary children — the new generation is already aware.”

Barry Cinnamon’s homeowner customers buy solar panels because they believe the climate is in trouble. “They understand from a science and engineering perspective that there’s a problem and there’s a solution,” said Cinnamon, the owner of Cinnamon Solar in Campbell, California.

Installing solar panels on a home can run into the tens of thousands of dollars, so owners aren’t expecting an immediate windfall from lower energy prices — they’re willing to wait five or 10 years for their investment to pay off, Cinnamon says.

For some owners, it’s the “what ifs” that are worrisome. Many business customers at Vitaliy Vinogradov’s lighting business base their buying decisions on tax rebates for green LED fixtures.

“What I am afraid of is that this may be a slippery slope — where eventually green technology loses subsidies, rebates, or gets taxed,” said Vinogradov, whose Modern Place Lighting is located in Pensacola, Florida.

Saagar Govil, CEO of Cemtrex Inc., an environmental technology company, fears it will lose business in the U.S. because there may be less need for his equipment that monitors and destroys greenhouse gases. He hopes the Farmingdale, New York-based company will be able to sell those products overseas, and in states that have pledged to follow the Paris accord.

“But until we start to see something concrete, it’s unclear how that will fly,” he said.

Some business owners, however, think Trump’s action will ultimately help their companies. John-Paul Maxfield, whose Denver-based Waste Farmers sells agricultural products and technology to greenhouse operators, believes it will raise awareness of global warming.

“It reinforces the need for alternative systems in the face of climate change,” Maxfield said.
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It was almost sunset as fishermen guided their boats back onto the beach at Joal, Senegal, after a long day at sea.

At first glance, it looks as though they’d collected a good day’s haul, but their nets were full of small sardinella, known locally as yaabooy.

Fisherman Mamdou Lamine had caught just one bucket of mackerel. He held one up next to a yaabooy to show how much bigger it was — and there are many more yaabooy than mackerel these days, he said. Furthermore, A local favorite, grouper, called thiof in Senegal, is getting harder to find.

The U.N. Food and Agricultural Organization says more than half of West Africa’s fisheries are dangerously depleted. Local officials in Senegal say it’s the foreign-owned industrial boats that have depleted fish stocks and destroyed marine habitats.

When fishermen at Joal set off on trips, they have to carry more fuel to reach waters farther away, and the added fuel costs cut into their earnings.

Longer trips, more fuel

Saff Sall was heading to Guinea-Bissau, about 200 kilometers south, in search of the elusive thiof. He said the fish are found among rocks, but that there are no more rocks because they have all been destroyed by the big industrial boats. That’s why they have to go to Guinea-Bissau to search for fish.  

Before, Senegalese fishermen had to spend only a week at sea to have all the fish they needed, he said, but now they have to spend twice as long to catch what they need.

Under-regulated fishing by locals has also contributed to the problem, said Joal Fishing Wharf chief of operations El Hadji Faye.

He said the government was making an effort, but the situation was very complicated.  He said that in the Senegalese city of Saint Louis, for example, each neighborhood has a designated day it can fish. But in Joal, they do not do that yet.  Every day, he said, all the fishermen go to sea.  Sometimes when a lot of them go, they bring back a lot of fish and the price is not good.

Economic staple

Fish are the backbone of the town’s economy. The day’s catch is taken to the local smokehouse, turned into fish meal for export abroad or sold fresh at the market, where knife-wielding female vendors prep the fish for sale.

Business is tough even for vendors with the rare large fish. Scarcity has driven up the prices. The price of thiof per kilogram has doubled in the past five years, local officials said.

Fish vendor Rose Ndour said that maybe those in the industry would do other work — if there were better jobs available.

The impact of overfishing is felt in households. The wife of the fishing wharf manager, Coumba Ndiaye, said that for the family’s evening Ramadan meal, she had to make due with sardinella because she could not get an affordable thiof at the market.

She made thieboudienne, Senegal’s national dish. Its name literally translates to “fish and rice.”  But for a good thieboudienne, you need good fish like dorade or thiof.

The fish are a part of Senegal’s culture. Ndiaye said that  “when someone says your husband is ‘thiofee,’ they are comparing him to thiof. The thiof is beautiful and noble. The thiof is classy.”

IN PHOTOS: No Good Fish in the Sea: Overfishing in Senegal

The children sat on their parents’ knees as the family ate around the large shared bowl of thieboudienne.

The fishermen would return to the sea the next day to try their luck again.
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Peru joined Indonesia Wednesday as the only two countries worldwide to make their fishing boat tracking data available to the public.

Such access will give conservationists, along with those who buy, sell and eat seafood, a clearer picture where their favorite dishes come from.

Officials from both countries made their announcements Wednesday at the United Nations Ocean Conference in New York.

Indonesia said its data is available now, while Peru promised to follow suit.

“This is another demonstration of the Peruvian government’s commitment to fight illegal activities at sea,” fisheries vice minister Hector Soldi said. “The Peruvian government intends to make the utmost effort to achieve sustainable management of our fisheries in order to increase its contribution to nutrition and global food security.”

The independent Global Fishing Watch uses satellites and terrestrial receivers to track the activities of 60,000 commercial and private fishing boats across the globe.

Global Fishing Watch is not an enforcement agency but a tool for environmentalists and conservationists, and not available to private citizens.

Jackie Savitz, senior vice president of the Oceana conservation group, tells VOA that once a fishing boat leaves port and disappears over the horizon, it’s hard to monitor the vessels. For example, she says, are they fishing in protected parts of the sea or encroaching into another country’s exclusive economic zone?

Savitz says she applauds the very strong leadership by Indonesia and Peru in allowing anyone to monitor their fishing boats at any time.

“With more eyes on the ocean, there are fewer places for illegal fishers to hide,” she said.

Savitz says she hopes other countries will follow Indonesia and Peru in helping to ensure the sustainability and health of one of the world’s most valuable resources.
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A global watchdog says the world economy is picking up speed but faces big political uncertainties and needs to be reformed to make growth work for a broader swath of people.

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development says in its latest outlook report, published Wednesday, that world growth should accelerate from 3 percent in 2016 to 3.6 percent in 2018.

The OECD, whose members comprise the richest economies in the world and that serves as a policy think tank, said businesses and consumers are increasingly confident and employment and trade are recovering.

OECD Chief Economist Catherine Mann said, however, that “policymakers cannot be complacent.” There is uncertainty over government policies in major countries and wages are not yet growing as much as hoped.
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President Donald Trump has chosen a regional banker as his nominee for a key government position in bank regulation.

 

Trump announced late Monday he is naming Joseph Otting as comptroller of the currency, heading a Treasury Department agency that is the chief overseer for federally chartered banks. If confirmed by the Senate, Otting will play a role in the Trump administration’s efforts to ease rules written under the Dodd-Frank law that stiffened financial regulation after the 2008-09 crisis.

 

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency charters and supervises national banks and savings and loans. The agency has hundreds of bank examiners, many of them working inside the nation’s largest financial institutions, who focus closely on lending practices.

 

Otting was CEO from 2010 to 2015 of OneWest Bank, where he worked with then-chairman Steven Mnuchin, who is now Treasury secretary. Democrats who objected to Mnuchin’s appointment as Treasury chief accused him of running a “foreclosure machine” when he headed the big California-based bank. The bank foreclosed on thousands of homeowners in the aftermath of the housing crisis caused by high-risk mortgages.

 

Mnuchin, who led an investor group that bought the failed IndyMac bank in 2009 and turned it into a profitable OneWest, has defended his actions as the bank’s chairman. He has said he worked hard during the financial crisis to help homeowners with refinancing mortgages so they could remain in their homes.

 

OneWest was among a number of big banks that signed consent orders with the OCC over alleged mortgage servicing abuses. The bank didn’t admit or deny wrongdoing under the 2011 order but agreed to undertake a plan to correct problems.

 

“If Mr. Otting didn’t deal fairly with the customers at his own bank, it’s difficult to see why he’s the best choice to look out for the interests of customers at more than 1,400 banks and thrifts across the country,” Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio, senior Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee, said in a statement.

 

Before he worked at OneWest, Otting was vice chairman of U.S. Bancorp, parent of Minneapolis-based U.S. Bank, one of the largest banks in the country.

 

With Otting’s appointment, Trump continues to fill out his key team of financial regulators, as his administration looks to easing rules and meet his campaign promises. Republicans have long complained that regulations were made too restrictive following the financial meltdown and have hampered economic growth by making it harder for banks to lend.

 

Jay Clayton, a Wall Street lawyer with ties to Goldman Sachs, is now chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission. Trump has three vacancies to fill on the Federal Reserve’s board of governors, including the key slot that holds the portfolio of bank supervision.

 

Otting would replace Keith Noreika, a financial services lawyer who was installed last month as acting comptroller in an unusual move apparently aimed at avoiding Senate confirmation and normal ethics requirements.

 

Noreika succeeded Thomas Curry, an Obama appointee, who had been comptroller since 2012 and leaned toward strict bank oversight.
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A decade ago, the first inklings of the coming recession emerged as a housing bubble fueled by scant regulation, low interest rates and easy credit gradually began to crater and soon would take the rest of the economy along for the painful ride.

By the time the Great Recession ended in June 2009, almost no one was spared.

Home prices fell 30 percent on average, the unemployment rate nearly doubled and the S&P 500 lost about half its value. The net worth of U.S. households and nonprofit organizations fell by nearly $14 trillion, about 20 percent.

In the midst of a presidential election, Washington struggled in its response. The bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers and the takeover of Merrill Lynch turned the spotlight on Democratic Senator Barack Obama of Illinois and Republican Senator John McCain even brighter, with McCain’s assertion that the “the fundamentals of our economy are strong” used to depict him as out of touch.

After the economy stabilized, Congress shifted from economic stimulus and bailouts to establishing the kind of regulatory framework that might keep another Great Recession from happening. The result was the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010.

This week, House Republicans will vote on legislation to gut Dodd-Frank and replace it with their own version. A look at the background of the legislation and the GOP plan.

Passed with little GOP support

In June 2010, the House passed the financial regulatory overhaul 237-192. Only three Republicans sided with the vast majority of Democratic members in support of the bill.

Two weeks later, the Senate passed the bill 60-39. This time, only two Republicans voted for the bill, Olympia Snowe of Maine and Scott Brown of Massachusetts. But that was just enough to overcome procedural hurdles that can stop major legislation in the Senate.

Obama signed Dodd-Frank into law on July 21, 2010: “In the end, our financial system only works — our market is only free — when there are clear rules and basic safeguards that prevent abuse, that check excess, that ensure that it is more profitable to play by the rules than to game the system,” Obama said. “And that’s what these reforms are designed to achieve — no more, no less.”

What does it do?

Under the act, large banks undergo “stress tests” to ensure they have enough capital necessary to absorb losses during an economic crisis. The law also put into place strict limits on how commercial banks could invest capital in speculative investments.

Dodd-Frank also established a process by which the federal government could break up and wind down a failing financial company whose failure threatened financial stability in the United States. And it established a new agency with a mission of ensuring that banks and other financial companies don’t abuse consumers.

That’s just a small snapshot of the changes put into place through the nearly 2,300-page bill.

Who were Dodd and Frank?

Representative Barney Frank was the top Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee. When the financial crisis hit, the Massachusetts lawmaker worked closely with the Bush administration to enact a historic bailout of the nation’s financial system so that the government could purchase as much as $700 billion in troubled assets to stabilize banks and get them lending again. Once the crisis began to subside, he turned his attention to an overhaul of the entire financial services industry. Frank was renowned for his knowledge of public policy and parliamentary rules, but also for his gruff, piercing criticism of those who disagreed with him. He declined to seek re-election in 2012 after serving 16 terms.

Senator Christopher Dodd was the chairman of the Senate’s Banking Committee. He announced in January 2010 that he would not seek re-election once his term ended, and he led the debate on the Senate side without fear of how it would harm his political standing. His home state of Connecticut counts several of the insurance companies that were shaken in the crisis.

Republican replacement

Republicans, most notably President Donald Trump, view the regulations associated with Dodd-Frank as increasing compliance costs for financial companies and making it harder to lend money and spur economic growth. Trump calls the law a “disaster.”

The replacement in the House has been authored by Texas Representative Jeb Hensarling, the chairman of the Financial Services Committee. At its core, the Financial Choice Act would give banks regulatory relief so long as they meet a strict basic requirement for the capital they build to cover unexpected big losses.

Federal regulators would also lose the power to dismantle a failing financial firm and sell off the pieces if they decide its collapse could endanger the system. The legislation also paints a bull’s eye on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which gained powers to scrutinize the practices of virtually any business selling financial products and services, such as credit card companies, payday lenders, mortgage servicers and debt collectors. Hensarling’s bill would eliminate those powers.

It would allow the president to remove the CFPB director at will, without needing a specific cause. Hensarling is backing off one provision, though, in the face of Republican division: He has promised to pull a provision that eliminates the cap on fees that banks can charge retailers when customers use a debit card.

What people are saying about the bill

House Republicans frequently speak about the need for economic growth.

“This is the Republican plan to reform Wall Street and revitalize Main Street — all while protecting the financial futures of Americans,” House Speaker Paul Ryan, a Wisconsin Republican, said in a statement Monday.

No Democratic lawmaker voted for the bill when it was approved by the Financial Services Committee, saying it would allow a return to the kind of risky practices that crashed the economy nearly 10 years ago.

“It’s an invitation for another Great Recession, or worse,” said Representative Maxine Waters of California, the ranking Democratic member of the committee.

While the bill is expected to pass the House, its prospects are uncertain in the Senate, where Democrats have the votes to block it.
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The U.S. and Mexican governments reached a new agreement to significantly shift their sugar trade mix, but U.S. sugar producers have failed to endorse the deal, leaving question marks over whether it could still sour broader trade relations.

U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said the “agreement in principle” with Mexican Economy Minister Ildefonso Guajardo calls for Mexico to reduce the share of refined sugar in its exports to the United States, while increasing the share of raw sugar.

He said Mexico met nearly every request by the U.S. sugar industry to fix problems with a 2014 sugar trade agreement.

“Unfortunately, despite all of these gains, the U.S. sugar industry has said it is unable to support the agreement in its present form,” Ross said without elaborating on their objections.

He added that the agreement would go through a final drafting stage in which he hoped that the U.S. producers could come on board with it.

Asked how long this would take, Ross said, “It should be days, not weeks or months.”

The deal cut by Ross and Guajardo leaves Mexico’s overall access to the U.S. sugar market unchanged but refined sugar must fall to 30 percent of overall imports from Mexico from a previous limit 53 percent.

It also lifts the U.S. price paid for Mexican raw sugar to 23 cents per pound from 22.25 cents, while, the price for refined sugar will rise to 28 cents per pound from 26 cents.

These prices exclude shipping and packaging costs, the Commerce Department said in a summary.

An agreement was expected to help avoid potential retaliation from Mexico on imports of U.S. high-fructose corn syrup, a trade battle that would heighten U.S.-Mexico tensions as both countries along with Canada prepare to begin renegotiating the 23-year-old North American Free Trade Agreement in August.

Ross on Monday extended the deadline for the negotiations by 24 hours to complete what he called “final technical consultations” for a deal.

Sources on both sides of the border said on Monday that the U.S. sugar industry had added new demands outside of the terms agreed on earlier in the day by the two governments.

U.S. refiners have complained that high-quality Mexican raw sugar was going straight to sugar consumers, rather than passing through U.S. refineries.

The deal would mark the culmination of a years-long dispute between the countries over sugar, after U.S. groups three years ago asked the government for protection from dumping of subsidized imports from Mexico.

In 2014, the U.S. government slapped large duties on Mexican sugar but hammered out a deal with Mexico that suspended those levies. Factions of the U.S. industry have said that the deal has failed to eliminate harm from Mexican imports.

The U.S. industry involved in the dispute include a coalition of cane and beet farming groups as well as ASR Group, the maker of Domino Sugar that is owned by the politically connected Fanjul family.

ASR and fellow cane refiner Imperial Sugar, owned by commodities firm Louis Dreyfus Company BV, have said they are being starved of raw supplies under the current deal.

They have asked the U.S. government to terminate the pact.

The latest talks began in March, two months after U.S. President Donald Trump took office vowing a tougher line on trade to protect U.S. industry and jobs.
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More international visitors came to the U.S. than expected in April 2017, according to a new report released Tuesday in Washington.

 

The U.S. Travel Association’s Travel Trends Index shows that international travel to the U.S. grew by about 4 percent in April, compared with data for April 2016.

 

The strong showing contradicted fears that tourism from abroad would slow in reaction to President Donald Trump’s proposed travel bans, which have been blocked by court challenges.

 

The Trump administration’s first ban on travel from a handful of mostly Muslim countries was issued Jan. 27. The Travel Association said any fallout from the travel bans would have begun to show up in April travel data.

 

“Are we surprised by this data? The honest answer is yes,” U.S. Travel Association CEO Roger Dow said in a statement. “There have been many claims that the administration’s actions on travel have tarnished America’s brand abroad, but we’re seeing hard economic evidence of the U.S. travel sector’s remarkable resilience.”

 

The U.S. Travel Association statistics also suggest that a slowdown in international arrivals that began in the spring of 2016 may be moderating.

Data from the U.S. Commerce Department has been showing a decline in international arrivals over the second and third quarters of last year. Those statistics take months to compile and will not reflect 2017 arrivals until next year. The government data is also more comprehensive, including, for example, border crossings by car from Canada and Mexico, which the U.S. Travel Association data does not include.

It’s also not unusual for travel spending and arrivals numbers to fluctuate month to month due to seasonal tourism and other economic factors.

 

The Travel Trends Index is compiled in partnership with Oxford Economics, using multiple sources including hotel and airline data.

 

The U.S. Travel Association is a national nonprofit organization representing the travel industry, dedicated to increasing travel within and to the U.S.

 
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