VANCOUVER, British Columbia — Diana and Rick Bellamy initially planned to take a Caribbean cruise out of Houston before heading to Laurel, Mississippi, to visit the home of one of their favorite HGTV shows, “Home Town.”
The Calgary couple scrapped those plans and vacationed last month along Mexico’s Pacific coast instead, put off by U.S. President Donald Trump’s trade war with Canada, the insults he’s hurled at their homeland, and stories about American border agents searching people’s phones and detaining foreigners for minor reasons.
She found it ironic that she felt more comfortable traveling to Mexico than the U.S.
“I never thought I would hear myself say that,” Diane Bellamy said.
Trump’s attacks on Canada’s economy and threats to make it the 51st state have infuriated Canadians, who are canceling trips to the U.S. in big numbers. They also seem to have also flipped the narrative heading into Canada’s parliamentary elections on Monday, with Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Liberal Party surging after trailing far behind in the polls just a few months ago.
The U.S. gets more visitors from Canada each year than from any other country, according to the U.S. Travel Association, an industry trade group, which said the 20.4 million visits from Canada last year generated $20.5 billion in spending.
But there has been a big drop in foreigners traveling to the U.S. since Trump took office, and Canadians are no exception. There were more than 910,000 fewer land border crossings from Canada into the U.S. last month than in March of 2024 — a more than 22% drop — according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection data. An Air Canada spokesman, meanwhile, said Canada-U.S. flight bookings for April through September are down about 10%.
Trump brushed aside the decline in tourism to the United States on Wednesday, saying, “There’s a little nationalism there I guess, perhaps. It’s not a big deal.”
Since Trump started his second term, there have been well-publicized reports of tourists being stopped at U.S. border crossings and held for weeks at immigration detention facilities before being allowed to fly home at their own expense.
On March 3, Canadian Jasmine Mooney, an actor and entrepreneur on a U.S. work visa, was detained by U.S. border agents in San Diego. She was released after 12 days detention.
Before Mooney’s release, British Columbia Premier David Eby expressed concern, saying: “It certainly reinforces anxiety that … many Canadians have about…
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