Is the US Travel Boycott Really Over?
How the Boycott Started
It was early 2025. No sooner had U.S. President Donald Trump been sworn in for his first (and, up to then, only) term in office than he initiated an extensive trade war against America’s northern neighbour, instituting tariffs against Canadian products, and-more to the point-calling on Canada to join the U.S. as its 51st state and doing so repeatedly.
Nobody to the north was amused by the quip; indeed, fully 90 percent of Canadians reported in a poll at the time they were following trade tensions very closely, an audience not seen since the early days of the COVID pandemic.
It was an immediate, deeply personal crisis. Within the month that the talk was escalating, flight bookings to the United States had plunged 71 to 76 percent relative to 12 months prior-what an industry report later characterized as a “cliff edge” – while at the local level, groceries removed their shelves of American produce, liquor boards purged their stores of U.S. Brands, and Canadians initiated a popular travel strike that left industry experts bewildered.
Soon afterward, then-foreign affairs minister Mlanie Joly would make the remarkable public statement that Canadians should think twice about visiting the U.S.; provinces-starting with Alberta, which promised an advertising campaign aimed at identifying U.S.-sourced products-would start touting the joys of remaining in Canada, and would soon follow with substantial budgetary injections into their domestic travel sectors.
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The Numbers Through 2025
By the close of 2025, it was hard to quantify the size of the boycott. The U.S. Travel Association pegged total tourism losses from Canadians staying away at more than $5.7 billion for the year, while a separate Forbes calculation put direct economic losses at $4.5 billion.
Border vehicle crossings were down for 10 months straight, with one particularly grim month showing a 30 percent drop from the year before.
Air travel was down as much as 24 percent between the two countries. Cell-phone location data (a measure of how often the phone left Canada), considered by researchers from the University of Toronto School of Cities more reliable than official border statistics, showed the decline was far larger-a 42 percent decrease in the year leading up to May 2026. The decline also wasn’t even, with South Carolina’s Myrtle Beach down 65 percent in Canadian trips. Even Las Vegas, where Canadians were the largest group of foreign visitors, was watching visitors from Mexico close the gap to Canadians for the first time since the pandemic era.
The airline response was predictable: cut capacity.
From January to March 2026, roughly 450,000 fewer seats were scheduled on flights from Canada to the United States, according to OAG, an aviation intelligence firm. WestJet cut its U.S. Flights by 19 percent, Air Canada by 7 percent, and budget carrier Flair Airlines, which cut U.S.-bound flights by 58 percent, went so far as to cancel all its U.S. Routes and redirect them to Mexico and Europe by June 2026, making Toronto-to-Cancun the No. 1 international air route into Mexico by the second quarter of 2026, having surpassed routes to Dallas and Houston to that point.
The U.S. Response
American tourism authorities didn’t shrug that off. Californians launched a tourism campaign with a target audience squarely aimed at Canadians. Storefront signs that said “Palm Springs Loves Canada” popped up throughout the desert town – its mayor pointed out Canadians were already worth nearly $300 million in the area. Las Vegas casino operators such as Derek Stevens have actually taken sales trips to Canada themselves, offering up par dollar pricing on hotels and gambling for Canadian currency.
Florida, Arizona and Walt Disney World have created specific Canadian travel deals and discounts that some have said offer as much as 30% off on hotels and tickets. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis went on record denying that the boycott was harming his state, which did, though, see near a 15% decrease in Canadians to the state, in large part due to the loss of its Canadian snowbirds.
Former U.S. Ambassador to Canada Pete Hoekstra said the answer to the situation in mid-2025 when asked by reporters, quite straightforwardly, “That’s their prerogative… And that’s where we get it with Canada that they’re just-that they’re very tough to deal with and-you look at some of these things that Canada decided to do. They remove our -the alcohol from their stores. That’s their business.”
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Signs of a Shift in 2026
Slowly, not entirely equitably, the tides began to shift by Spring 2026. Data released by Statistics Canada showed a narrowing of the year-over-year decline in Canadians’ U.S. Travel, from a 25 per cent drop in December 2025 to only 7.6 per cent by March 2026. Then, in April 2026, Canadian return trips from the U.S. Showed their first increase compared with a year earlier in 14 months, by 1.4 per cent.
In June 2026, some figures showed an upswing and a more rapid recovery as return trips reached 1.9 million in a single month, an increase of 9.5 per cent compared to the previous year, fueled by those arriving by car.
“The U.S. And Canadian border crossing data we track here at Infoware Inc. Confirm your observation. Travel between the two nations really picked up significantly last year,” noted a spokesman for Canadian market intelligence firm Infoware Inc. In June 2026. “In recent weeks we’ve been observing a significant spike in vehicle border crossing between Canada and the US.” At the same time Amtrak announced plans for its first U.S. Preclearance facility in North America at Vancouver’s Pacific Central Station, set to coincide with 2026 FIFA World Cup matches in Vancouver and Seattle to speed entry to the United States.
That, and by the time Canadians came roaring back, Americans seemed to never really had left in the first place.
By February 2026 the U.S. Total had increased 6.1 per cent over 12 months-the first year-over-year increase in more than a year.
Current Scenario
Despite the tepid April and June bumps, the trend in sentiment has been far less resilient. For the second year in a row, the number of Canadians expressing intent to avoid a trip to the United States in 2026 was in the low 70-something range – the Business Development Bank of Canada, in late February/early March 2026, noted that 70 percent didn’t plan to venture south while 92 percent would still be exploring Canada. A YouGov survey commissioned by Flight Centre Canada showed 62 percent of Canadians saying they were less likely to travel to the United States in 2026 than in earlier years. On the street, business continues to be rotten.
Barbara Barrett of the Frontier Duty Free Association, a lobby group representing family-owned duty-free operations across the border, summed up her members’ current business as “dismal,” with “no great expectation among our members right now,” she said, from a recent industry call. Visit Seattle says overall expected foreign visitor volume for 2026 is down 17 percent, much of it blamed on the boycott, and Meet Boston’s expected hotel occupancy for June 2026 was up a mere 11 percent year over year – less than expected. “I’d call it levelling off rather than recovering,” said one economist focusing on tourism about current patterns. The fact that monthly changes are slightly up month-over-month hardly indicates a return to pre-2025 numbers, with many analysts anticipating that attitudes among older travellers, and among past visitors, remain unyielding as long as political rhetoric persist.
The Domestic Silver Lining
Whatever the future brings for cross-border tourism, Canada’s domestic tourism sector is certainly already reaping the rewards. “Summer tourist revenue reached an all-time high in the summer of 2025,” according to reports from Destination Canada, the Crown corporation mandated to promote national tourism. Summer revenues for the year climbed 6% to $59 billion, and projections for 2026 place total revenues at $140.9 billion – up another 6%.
The contribution of the tourism sector to GDP grew by 5% annualized in the fourth quarter of 2025 while the broader economy actually shrunk.
The same can be said for personal experience. Fredericton-based painter Bruce Newman once used to journey south of the border up to 12 times a year but recently took his wife to London instead of the New York city where they celebrated her 65th birthday last year. “We’re having an opportunity to look closer to home and discover some of Canada’s more remote and beautiful places,” Mr. Newman told CBC News in April, “like the waterfalls around his own home.” His sights are now on possible trips to Quebec’s Gasp Peninsula or the rugged Scottish highlands, anywhere but south of the line.
“Things have to change in the States, definitely while Trump’s in office, we’re not interested in going to the States at all.”
Quick Reference: Boycott Timeline
| Period | Key Development |
|---|---|
Feb 2025 |
New Trump tariffs and the “51st state” idea spur rapid increase in “Boycott America” talk. |
Mar 2025 |
Flight bookings to the U.S. Drop between 71% and 76% annually; duty-free stores say sales fell by more than 80%. |
2025 (full year) |
The number of Canadians traveling to the U.S. Fell by 21% (based on International Travel Statistics data) to 42% (based on Border crossing data); U.S. Losses exceeded $5.7B |
Dec 2025 |
Data show a drop of 26% year over year in Canadians traveling to U.S. |
Mar 2026 |
U.S. visit losses narrowed to 7.6% on year over year basis, some early signs of leveling out appear. |
Apr 2026 |
First year-over-year increase, 1.4 per cent, in Canadian trips to the U.S. recorded since the “Boycott America” drive was launched. |
Jun 2026 |
A 9.5-per-cent bounce from the prior year was observed in month-over-month returns to Canada and Amtrak launched preclearance services in Vancouver in preparation for the World Cup of FIFA tournament. |
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Frequently Asked Questions
No. The boycott did not end. Most Canadians are still saying they do not intend to visit the United States this year, according to one recent survey.
In early 2025, when President Trump began instituting tariffs on Canadian goods, made a number of public suggestions that Canada become the 51st United States, and incited consumer and traveller outrage.
Losses as a result of the travel boycott have totalled more than $5.7 billion annually. Forbes estimated its members had direct economic loses to boycott at $4.5 billion in 2025 alone.
Yes; Destination Canada this summer reported increased 2025 revenue with travel within Canada due to the fact that 92 per cent of Canadians plan a domestic vacation in 2026.
Las Vegas, the states of Florida and South Carolina, and cities such as Myrtle Beach are suffering. Canadians now visit Myrtle Beach 65% less, and they visit Las Vegas 17% less than previously, as recorded by Destination Canada.
Conclusion
More than a year later, the travel moratorium that began last year hasn’t ended as much as waned. While 2025 brought genuine and significant disruption in cross border activity the early 2026 statistics indicate that those declines seem to have run their course and may be levelling off rather than deepening. But a plateau is not necessarily a turn around.
And if for many of Canadians staying out has morphed into something a little bit closer to habit than a political protest against Washington there still remain many more trips cancelled then taken.
The trajectory going forward will be determined more by policy then any deals offered on the price of a pint or that 1 to 1 exchange rate than anywhere else. Every blip upward in the travel rates can be easily correlated to calming of tempers in the other country and whenever things heat up again the recovery process hits a snag. Presently you really can only say that in some ways, the United States is no longer sliding, but the relationship and the flow of Americans south of the border is far from healed, and each side, and you, are still looking up to find its level going forward.
The contribution of the tourism sector to GDP grew by 5% annualized in the fourth quarter of 2025 while the broader economy actually shrunk.
The same can be said for personal experience. Fredericton-based painter Bruce Newman once used to journey south of the border up to 12 times a year but recently took his wife to London instead of the New York city where they celebrated her 65th birthday last year. “We’re having an opportunity to look closer to home and discover some of Canada’s more remote and beautiful places,” Mr. Newman told CBC News in April, “like the waterfalls around his own home.” His sights are now on possible trips to Quebec’s Gasp Peninsula or the rugged Scottish highlands, anywhere but south of the line.
“Things have to change in the States, definitely while Trump’s in office, we’re not interested in going to the States at all.”