The anger against Trump should cost American international visitors, says the forecasterist

By Dee-Ann Durbin

Anger against the prices and rhetoric of the Trump administration will likely cause international trips to the United States even more than expected this year, an influential travel forecasting company announced on Tuesday.

The tourism economy said that it expects the number of people who arrive in the United States from abroad to decrease 9.4% this year. It is almost double the 5% drop in company forecasts at the end of February.

At the start of the year, the tourism economy predicted a booming year for international travel in the United States, with 9% visits compared to 2024.

But the president of the tourism economy, Adam Sacks, said that the high -level locking of European tourists on the American border in the past few weeks had cooled international travelers. Potential visitors were also irritated by the prices, Trump’s position towards Canada and Greenland, and its animated White House exchange with President Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

“With each elaboration of policies, each rhetorical missive, we just see an uncompvious error after an uncompromising error in the administration,” said Sacks. “This has a direct impact on international trips to the United States”

The decline will have consequences for airlines, hotels, national parks and other sites frequented by tourists.

Tourism Economics is expecting Canada’s trips to fall 20% this year, a decrease that will be acutely felt in border states like New York and Michigan but also popular tourist destinations such as California, Nevada and Florida.

The US Travel Association, a commercial group, has also warned of Canadians who stay away. Even a 10% reduction in Canada’s trips could mean 2.0 million less visits, $ 2.1 billion in lost spending and 14,000 job losses, the group said in February.

Other companies related to travel have noted worrying signs. At its annual shareholder meeting on Monday, Air Canada said that reservations in the United States were down 10% for the April-September period compared to the same period a year ago.

Sacks said it is now expecting foreign visitors to spend $ 9 billion in the United States compared to 2024 when international tourism in the country increased by 9.1%.

“Irony is that the prices are set up to help straighten the trade deficit, but they harm the trade balance by making fewer international travelers spending money here,” Sacks said.

Sacks said international arrivals got closer to returning to the 2019 numbers, before the coronavirus pandemic stops most of the trips. Now he thinks they will not come back to this level in 2029.

Originally published: April 1, 2025 at 4:10 p.m.