Why Did Fewer Canadians Visit The U.S. In 2025?
Historically, Canadians have comprised the single largest cohort of inbound tourists to the U.S., making up about a quarter of all foreign visitors, according to the U.S. National Travel and Tourism Office (NTTO). In spring of 2025, when President Donald Trump began saying he would make Canada “the 51st state,” then-Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told Canadians not to vacation south of the border, and the negative sentiment has stuck. Roughly six in 10 Canadians (57%) said U.S. government policies, trade practices and political statements have made them less likely to travel to the U.S. in the next 12 months, according to a Longwoods International tracking survey fielded in April. Destination boycotts are not uncommon in the travel industry, but “in my 37 years in the travel industry, I have never seen anything like what the Canadians have pulled off,” Amir Eylon, President and CEO of Longwoods International, told Forbes in March.
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Big Number
$4.5 billion. That’s how much the U.S. economy lost last year due to a 22% drop in Canadian visitation. In early 2025, the U.S. Travel Association warned even a 10% reduction in Canadian inbound travel could translate to $2.1 billion in lost spending and 140,000 lost jobs in the hospitality sector.
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Canadian Boycott Drove A Second Trump Slump
During Trump’s first term, the U.S. saw a 4% drop in international visitation in the first seven months of 2017, according to NTTO data. The travel industry quickly dubbed the decline a “Trump Slump,” tying the decline to the president’s America First anti-immigrant rhetoric and more restrictive visa rules for some countries. But Trump’s second Trump Slump has inflicted more economic damage than the first. In 2025, while tourism grew around the globe, the U.S. was the only nation out of 184 to see international visitor spending decline, according to a study by the World Travel & Tourism Council. In total, the U.S. saw a 6.3% downturn in inbound international tourism, driven mainly by Trump’s tariffs, America First rhetoric and immigration policies.
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Further Reading
1% More Canadians Visited U.S. In April—But It’s Not Good News (Forbes)