For the same price...
... I can have a 13" MacBook Air with a 1440 x 900 pixel display, a better CPU, a UNIX OS with a decent GUI, the iLife'11 apps (which aren't the usual shovel-ware, although iWeb is clearly not long for this world)...
... oh yeah: and a Thunderbolt port. Which is to USB 3 what USB 3 is to an RS232 serial port. And, unlike USB, Thunderbolt lets the CPU get on with other, more useful, work instead of having to babysit the damned connection.
Thunderbolt is still a new technology, but it has a lot more headroom to play with: a single Thunderbolt breakout box can provide HDMI, DisplayPort, USB 2, USB 3, Firewire, gigabit Ethernet, and more—i.e. all the docking options you need for when your laptop is parked on your desktop, including a connection to a big display. Unplug just the one cable and you're ready to go.
USB 3 cannot even come close to this, so not including a Thunderbolt port on a laptop that already has multiple Intel-supplied components makes no sense. The royalties issue is no excuse: USB 3 has royalty obligations too. Thunderbolt is not an Apple-exclusive technology, so there's no reason not to include it other than cost-cutting.
So, no. Utter, utter fail. And then some.