THREE months into his presidency, Donald Trump has engendered little but despair among among travel-industry types. Restrictions announced today on taking laptops and iPads aboard airlines originating from eight Middle Eastern countries are probably reasonable (see Gulliver). But an ill-considered attempt in January to ban travellers from seven mostly-Muslim countries seems to have affected visitor numbers. When that order was shot down by the courts, and a revised one proposed, it turned out that it might cause longer waits for foreigners leaving the country. Then last week in his budget blueprint, Mr Trump proposed big cuts to domestic spending to help fund the military. Several of the programmes on the chopping block have implications for business travellers.

One such is a call to privatise the country’s air traffic control system. The budget outline says privatisation would make air traffic control “more efficient and innovative while maintaining safety”. Given how slow the Federal Aviation Administration has been to modernise the system, that claim may well have some merit. But other safety and security savings are also in Mr Trump’s sights. One idea is to reduce the presence of “Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response” teams, which sweep airports and other transit centres, often with bomb-sniffing dogs (pictured). These act as a conspicuous reminder to would-be attackers of what they are up against. In addition, the budget suggests cutting the Behavior Detection Officer programme, which aims to catch malicious travellers by reading body cues, but came in for criticism when its officers were found to ridicule passengers. Mr Trump would also like to reduce funding for state and local airport patrols, suggesting that these jurisdictions pay for the service themselves.

To compensate for the bulk of the funding cuts to the Transportation Security Administration, the budget calls for an increased TSA fee on all United States flights. Currently, flyers pay an extra $5.60 on all one-way tickets; that would increase by $1 per flight leg. Most business travellers will not blanch at such a rise. But they will object if cuts lead to longer lines at airport security. Dreadful queues last year were attributed in part to low morale among officers, many of whom worked part-time for low salaries and benefits. That lead to frequent turnover. The situation improved significantly when 3,000 of those workers were given full-time contracts. The worry is that, if the TSA is again feeling a pinch, it might revert to its older practices.

Those flying to New York or Boston will no doubt cope with such hardships. But anyone visiting more rural areas could find life more complicated. Mr Trump wants to end a $175m programme that helps fund flights to such communities; without it, many of these services are likely to disappear. Getting to Michigan’s expansive Upper Peninsula, for example, could require an eight-hour drive from a larger airport.

Rail travel could face bigger cuts. Again, travellers to New York or Boston will be fine. Mr Trump’s budget calls for Amtrak to focus on its Northeast Corridor train service between those two cities. But it would end federal subsidies for Amtrak’s long-distance train routes, which often operate at a loss. The result could be the end of the nationwide service that once formed the backbone of America’s transcontinental expansion. The budget would also cut nearly $500m from a programme that provides grants to states for transportation projects, including rail transit. The could cripple some systems, such as Washington, DC’s Metro, the nation’s second-largest rapid transit network, which relies on federal funds.

Overall, Mr Trump’s financial blueprint—which is not yet a final proposal, but rather a “skinny budget” outlining the president’s fiscal priorities—would cut Transportation Department funding by 13%. But that is not the end of the story. The president has also called for a $1trn investment in infrastructure. That could mean a boost to transit projects across the country. Or it could mean that travellers just face more tolls, in addition to longer airport lines and fewer rail options.