In my country I think a T could lose their licence if they hugged their clients. I don't know that, but I suspect that it is so. I agree that it seems inappropriate, but it's a point-of-view thing. My limited insight into how things are in the US suggests that people who are not very close friends or family hug each other more frequently than what is normal in my part of the world, and then maybe it is also natural to hug a T. And I know from previous threads on the subject that many American therapists also don't hug clients or touch them in other ways than handshakes, so it's not uniform there either.