Canada’s tourism boycott is costing the U.S. economy billions

Cross-border visits have dropped 35 percent since Trump’s return, wiping out an estimated $4.5 billion in spending this year alone.

The Buffalo-Niagara Falls border crossing, usually a blur of Ontario license plates and families hauling back discounted sneakers, has been quiet. On a Tuesday afternoon in early April, the wait time to enter the United States was six minutes. Six minutes. A CBP officer I spoke with — he asked not to be named, obviously — told me he’d spent more time that morning watching a pair of geese argue over a french fry than processing vehicles.

This is not normal. In a typical spring, the Peace Bridge handles about ten thousand cars a day. Lately, it’s been closer to six thousand. And the people who aren’t coming aren’t just skipping a weekend trip — they’re staying home for good.

The 35 percent plunge

The numbers are stark. According to Statistics Canada and U.S. Customs and Border Protection data analyzed by Forbes, Canadian visitation to the United States has fallen 35 percent since President Trump returned to office in January 2025. That is not a seasonal wobble or a weather blip. It is a sustained, self-inflicted wound that has now lasted fifteen months and shows no sign of healing.

To put that in dollar terms: Canadian tourists spent about $20.5 billion in the United States in 2024. A 35 percent drop means roughly $7.2 billion in lost revenue on an annualized basis. But the real damage is concentrated in specific sectors and cities. Border towns like Buffalo, Niagara Falls, Detroit, and Bellingham, Washington, rely on Canadian day-trippers for everything from restaurant lunch rushes to grocery store sales. The ripple effects hit hotel chains, gas stations, and the beleaguered U.S. airline industry, which has already seen a 12 percent decline in Canadian-origin bookings, according to Airlines for America.

“We used to get busloads of seniors from Toronto every Thursday,” a restaurant owner in Niagara Falls, New York told me. “Now it’s just empty tables.” His revenue is down 28 percent year-over-year. He’s cut his staff from twelve to seven.

Why they’re staying home

The reasons are political and personal. The Trump administration’s early 2025 trade war — tariffs on Canadian lumber, dairy, and aluminum, followed by Canadian retaliatory tariffs on American products — generated a wave of nationalist sentiment north of the border. “Buy Canadian” campaigns went viral. A Montreal-based influencer started a “Skip the U.S.” challenge that racked up forty million views on TikTok. But the bigger factor, according to multiple surveys, is a sense of unwelcome.

A Leger poll conducted in March 2026 found that 62 percent of Canadians said they felt less welcome in the United States than they did two years ago. The reasons cited included the administration’s immigration rhetoric, the travel ban on citizens from several Muslim-majority countries, and the general tone of the political discourse. “It’s not about tariffs anymore,” said a Toronto-based travel agent I spoke with. “It’s about dignity. People don’t want to spend their vacation money in a country where the president calls their prime minister a ‘weakling.’”

That’s not hyperbole. In February 2025, Trump publicly referred to Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney as “weakling Carney” during a press conference about dairy quotas. The clip played on Canadian news networks for days.

The China factor

The United States is not just losing Canadian tourists — it is falling behind China in the global competition for international visitors. Bloomberg reported this week that China is on track to become the world’s top tourism economy within three years, driven by a surge in inbound travel from Southeast Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. Meanwhile, the U.S. share of global tourism spending has declined from 14.2 percent in 2019 to an estimated 11.8 percent in 2025.

The reasons are overlapping: a strong U.S. dollar makes everything more expensive for foreign visitors; visa processing delays at the State Department have created a backlog of about 1.7 million applications; and the broader perception of the country as unwelcoming has become a self-fulfilling prophecy. In 2024, the United States hosted 66.6 million international visitors. That number is projected to fall to 61 million in 2026 — a drop of nearly 9 percent.

Tourism is not the largest sector of the U.S. economy, but it is a significant employer. The industry supports roughly 8.5 million jobs directly, according to the U.S. Travel Association. A sustained decline in foreign visitation — combined with the Canadian boycott — is expected to cost the U.S. economy between $12 billion and $18 billion in lost spending over the next two years.

A quiet crisis in border towns

The pain is not evenly distributed. In Buffalo, the mayor’s office has launched a “Buffalo Welcomes Everyone” campaign, complete with billboards in English and French. It has not moved the needle. Hotel occupancy rates in Erie County have dropped from 72 percent in early 2024 to 58 percent in the first quarter of 2026.

In Bellingham, Washington, the local chamber of commerce reports that Canadian visitors — who typically account for 30 percent of retail sales in Whatcom County — have decreased by nearly half. A Costco in the city told a local newspaper that it had seen a 40 percent drop in Canadian license plates in its parking lot.

And in Detroit, the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel, which connects the two cities, reported a 33 percent decline in traffic. The tunnel’s general manager told the Detroit Free Press that the drop was “unprecedented in the tunnel’s history except for during the pandemic.”

What comes next

There is no obvious off-ramp. The trade war has not escalated into a full-blown crisis, but it has not been resolved either. The White House has shown little interest in repairing the relationship. Trump’s tariffs remain in place. Carney, for his part, has not made conciliatory gestures; in a speech in Ottawa last month, he said, “Canada will not be bullied.”

The travel industry is scrambling to adapt. Airlines have cut capacity on Canada-U.S. routes. Hotels near the border are offering deep discounts. But the fundamental problem — a loss of trust and goodwill — is not something a coupon can fix.

In the meantime, the geese have taken over the Peace Bridge.