Canadian boycott of US travel redirects billions to domestic and overseas destinations

Kent Truscott had spent years driving south from Ontario to explore America—California, New York, the open road. But in late 2024, he and his family made a decision that felt final: they would not spend another dollar there. The trigger was not one thing but a accumulation of them: tariffs, the president's talk of annexing Canada, the rhetoric that had begun to feel personal. When spring came and Truscott's brother invited him to Texas to watch a SpaceX Starship launch, a trip they'd planned for months, Truscott cancelled. He and his wife would have spent thousands of dollars. Instead, they rented a car and drove east, to Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, where Truscott ate the best halibut of his life, caught that morning from the bay.

He is not alone. More than a year after Trump returned to the White House, hundreds of thousands of Canadians have made the same choice. In April 2025, Canadians made 800,000 fewer trips across the border than they had in April 2024. The cumulative effect is staggering: roughly C$3.3 billion in travel revenue that would have flowed to American cities and states has instead gone elsewhere—to Canadian provinces, to Europe, to anywhere but the United States. It is a boycott conducted not through organized campaigns but through millions of individual decisions, each one a small act of defiance or principle or both.

Lynda Rousseau and her husband Joe had lived in Texas for nineteen years. They had planned to retire there, to settle into the life they'd built. But when Trump won re-election, they could not bear it. They moved back to Canada in February 2025, months earlier than planned. "We just couldn't stand the idea of living there while he was running things," Rousseau said. The couple had booked a cruise departing from New York, bound for the Panama Canal. They cancelled it and rebooked the same voyage through Rome and Barcelona instead. Now they cross the border only to collect mail, spending nothing while they do. They had dreamed of becoming snowbirds, those Canadians who flee winter for Florida or Arizona. That dream is gone. Rousseau said she mourns the convenience of proximity—the US had always been cheap and close. But she has gained something else: what she called "a little more pride in Canada."

Nick Smith, a retiree in Vancouver, had stopped visiting American national parks after Trump's first election in 2016. He resumed when Biden took office. Now he has stopped again, and this time he is avoiding even connecting flights through American cities. Last autumn, he and his friends flew direct from Vancouver to Mexico City rather than route through the US. Earlier this year, he and his wife travelled to Morocco for the first time, visiting Marrakech, Fez, and Essaouira. Smith found himself moved by witnessing Ramadan in a Muslim country, by seeing how seriously people took the fasting ritual. "We just don't have anything like that in Canada," he said. When asked if he would return to the US when Trump leaves office, Smith was clear: that alone would not be enough. He would need to see reconciliation, actions that demonstrated a genuine return to amicable relations.

Christie Mitchell, fifty years old, from Powell River, British Columbia, had spent a lifetime crossing the border. She had hiked national parks, attended football games, driven an RV through multiple states to Florida. She was of a generation that had not needed a passport, that had felt the border was almost ceremonial. "I just always felt welcome," she said. That feeling has evaporated. Rather than take a quick, cheap trip to Las Vegas for her fiftieth birthday, Mitchell hiked the Camino Francés, a 490-mile route through Spain. She walked it earlier this year, and along the way she met people in transition, people with their own reasons for being there. She had conversations with strangers that stayed with her. Mitchell said she would consider returning to the US if a different president took office and relations with Canada were restored. But the threshold for that return has risen considerably.

American cities have noticed the absence. New York City's tourism board announced in July that it would offer Broadway tickets and hotel rooms to Canadian tourists at a thirty percent discount. Other cities and states have launched targeted advertising campaigns, trying to lure visitors back. But the boycott is not primarily about price. It is about a feeling that something fundamental has broken. Truscott put it plainly: "There has been a fundamental break." He noted the anti-immigration raids, policies he disagreed with, the president's rhetoric and actions against Canada. "As much as I would like to say that when Donald Trump leaves everything will go back to normal, well, 70 million people voted for it," he said. The currency has weakened, making American travel less affordable. But that is not the whole story. Many Canadians say they feel their country's relationship with the United States has reached a breaking point, and that it would take far more than a change in administration to repair it.