Canadians are avoiding America at an unprecedented rate

(Image courtesy of BC Parks)

With recent tariffs levied against Canada by the US government, as well as President Donald Trump’s threats of annexing Canada, Canadian-American relations have hit a major bump. This bump has defined Canadian tourism to the States in the summer of 2025. 

Statistics Canada has published data on Canadian international travel, involving automobile crossings to the US, and the results are interesting, to say the least. 

In the previous month, Canadian return trips over the land border decreased by 37 percent compared to July 2024, marking “the seventh consecutive month of year-over-year declines” for automobile crossings. This aligns with the inauguration of President Trump’s administration back in January of this year. 

Impacts on business

Canadian-resident return trips from the United States by automobile, July 2019 to 2025. (Courtesy of Statistics Canada).

Statistics on air travel tell a similar story to those on land borders. Even though the overall number of Canadians returning from overseas trips to other countries increased, “the number of returning Canadian-resident trips by air from the United States declined 25.8 percent to 383,700  [travellers, in comparison to previous years' numbers].”

It is also interesting to note that US resident trips to Canada over the land border decreased by seven percent in comparison to previous years, marking the sixth consecutive month of year-over-year decline. While not as severe as the Canadian slump in numbers, it’s still an ongoing trend of interest.  

The “boycott” from Canadians has definitely been felt at multiple levels within the US. Many businesses that were reliant on or heavily benefited from Canadian tourism have been suffering from the lack of Canadian customer investment. 

Paul Dame, owner of Bluff Point Golf Resort in New York state, told NPR that his business has been hurting from the lack of Canadian visitors this year. 

"It's a very personal situation. They've been attacked personally, and it's emotional," he said. "It's something that we would react [to] the same way if the opposite [were] happening to us."

Liquor companies in the US have also felt the impact of the Canadian boycott of their goods. While the federal government has recently lifted many of the tariffs on the US, including alcohol, many provinces have still removed American liquor from government stores, with some private businesses following suit. 

Chris Swonger, CEO and President of the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States, stated in response to the tariffs being dropped that “this is a very positive sign, but until all provinces put American spirits back on their shelves, it won’t have much of an impact.”

Political voices chime in

(Courtesy of CBC)

Even American politicians have been attentive to the absence of Canadians. 

Minnesota Governor and former 2024 Democratic vice-presidential nominee Tim Walz released a statement on this issue, saying that “more than half of Minnesota’s international visitors come from Canada,” and “we want our Canadian neighbors to know they’re not just welcome here — they’re encouraged to visit and continue our long friendship.”

Shelley Berkley, the mayor of Las Vegas, told reporters last week that “we have a rather large market with the Canadians, it's gone from a faucet to a drip.” She also echoed the same statement when it came to Mexican visitors from the south. 

Communication studies Professor Shelley Boulianne from Mount Royal University recently did a study where she found that Canada was leading the boycott of American goods in comparison to the UK and France. A caveat she acknowledges is that Canadians have a lot more opportunities to directly boycott the US due to geographical proximity. 

Pete Hoekstra, American ambassador to Canada, recently said that Canadians avoiding American travel and the alcohol boycott are among the reasons President Donald Trump thinks the country is “nasty” in response to these developments. 

While the tariffs that fall under CUSMA have been pulled by Prime Minister Mark Carney and his Liberal government, tensions between the two historically allied nations remain.