$18 billion - the cost of donald trump's muslim ban

Photo: Donald Trump speaking at CPAC 2011 Gage Skidmore

Donald Trump called for a ban on all Muslim travelers to the USA yesterday, a proposal that was met with disgust by members of the public.

Indeed, they arrive in the wake of terror attacks by extremists in Paris and elsewhere linked to IS, something that has seen Trump branded with a colourful array of words by users of social media, with BuzzFeed's Editor-in-Chief Ben Smith reportedly telling staff that is "entirely fair" for them to call him a "mendacious racist".

New research, though, reveals that his proposal could cost a lot more than the potential incitement of racial hatred.

Research by Travel and Leisure has found that the billionaire's idea could cost billions for his own country in the loss of tourist revenue.

A 2012 study cited by Economy Watch found that Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE represent 37 per cent of all Muslim travelers worldwide. In 2013, just over 1 million Middle East-based tourists passed through US customs, spending an average of $6,000 each, totalling $6.8 billion. Scale the figures up to represent the full arrange of Muslim travelers and Travel and Leisure concludes that Trump's ban could cause $18.4 billion to be lost in revenue from the US economy, without even considering the costs of implementing the idea in the first place.

In the UK, meanwhile, a petition has been launched to call for the would-be Republican presidential candidate to be banned from entering the country. At the time of writing, the petition has over 213,000 signatures. Once a petition has more than 100,000 names, the UK government is legally required to respond to it, while the matter must also be considered for debate in parliament.