Tourist Trap
Millions of international tourists are avoiding the U.S. this summer, and Americans are starting to feel the loss.
Global tourism is up across the world, but not in the United States. Millions of international tourists, many turned off by President Trump’s policies and political rhetoric, are choosing to travel elsewhere. It’s a move economists say could end up costing the U.S. up to $29 billion—and millions of jobs.
NEW YORK—Like most New Yorkers, I try to avoid Times Square in July.
Most summers, it becomes nearly impossible to navigate the square’s tourist-packed sidewalks and streets, with some visitors barely moving from one block to the next, and young families locking arms to form human walls the width of the sidewalk—just so they can take in the sights without losing each other in the crowd.
Make no mistake. I have nothing against tourists. I am often one, myself, in the foreign cities I visit for work and play. The larger the crowds, the better it is for the local economy.
But this summer? Times Square is visibly less crowded. Foreign tourism is down, and many New Yorkers and other Americans are starting to feel the pinch.
Just ask the Naked Cowboy—one of dozens of Time Square’s regular street performers moonlighting as Instagram bait. [This guy, Robert Burck, wears only cowboy boots, a cowboy hat and skimpy, jockey-style briefs.] He told us the other day that “women still line up to get a selfie with me, but this summer, there are many fewer people visiting from other countries.”
Vibe shift
Burck is on to something.
According to Oxford Economics, political and economic headwinds have been fueling significant declines in the number of foreigners visiting the United States this year, with the biggest no-shows so far being Canadian tourists (down 20.2%), Mexican tourists (down 7.6%) and foreign travelers from Western Europe (down 17.2% in March and by 5.8% overall). Foreign travelers from the two largest European markets—the United Kingdom and Germany—have been especially wary of U.S. travel since January. Visits by the British are down by 15%, while the number of visits this year by Germans has fallen by 29%—influenced, in part, by their governments’ warnings to avoid traveling to the U.S. due to the possibility of detention by American immigration authorities.
Aran Ryan, Director of Industry Studies for Tourism Economics, said last month that the negative outlook he had earlier this year for inbound travel to the U.S. “hasn’t budged.” The biggest U.S.-based hotel chains—Marriott, Hyatt and Hilton—say they are continuing to experience slower growth, and airlines are also taking a hit. Here in New York last month, some 160,000 fewer foreign passengers arrived via this city’s Kennedy and Newark international airports, and the number of foreign tourists visiting other top U.S. tourist destinations, including Orlando, Miami and Los Angeles, is also continuing to show a decline.
“There used to be thousands of people from Canada coming to New York,” says Omar Tallat, 35, who runs a corn dog stand near Times Square. “This year, business is very bad.”
A Trump slump?
According to the World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC), President Trump’s tariffs, his global trade war, travel bans, inflammatory rhetoric and harsh immigration policies are all continuing to have a chilling effect on some foreign visitors, and a reversal of Trump’s policies is not expected any time soon. “This should be a wake-up call to the U.S. government,” Julia Simpson, WTTC’s President and CEO, said in a statement. “While other nations are rolling out the welcome mat, the U.S. government is putting up the ‘closed’ sign.”
Both the WTTC and Tourism Economics, the two leading data centers for the tourism industry, are predicting a sharp drop in spending by international travelers to the United States for the rest of the year, one which they are projecting will cost the United States an estimated $12.5 billion. America is the only country among the 184 analyzed by the WTTC expected to end 2025 with a decline in international visitors. Tourism Economics says 9.4% fewer foreign travelers will visit the United States this year. In January, it was expecting a 9% increase. “The United States now has a brand problem,” says Adam Sacks, the company’s CEO.
Oh, Canada!
Canadian tourists to the U.S. have historically made up around a quarter of arrivals. But now, Canadian border crossings are plummeting, and chiefly since Trump stepped up his push to make Canada the 51st state, prompting former Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to explicitly urge Canadians last February to reconsider booking international trips. “Now is the time to choose Canada,” Trudeau said.
Today, many Canadians are informally boycotting the United States. A recent Pew survey found that 59% of Canadians now view the U.S. as being the “greatest threat” to their country. Traffic at one of the busiest border crossings, near Niagara Falls, fell 42% in March compared with 2024. “The continued taunts about a 51st state, calling the prime minister ‘governor,’ calling the border a fiction—that really angers us,” John W. Gulliver, the president of the New England-Canada Business Council recently told The New York Times.
Mexican and European tourists, meanwhile, are worried about the possibility of an escalating trade war spurred by Trump’s tariffs and fear that U.S. immigration authorities might start detaining increasing numbers of foreign tourists. Julie Coker, President and CEO of NYC Tourism + Conventions, says “we are still hopeful things might turn around, but the United States’ status as a global tourist magnet is changing.”
What now?
All is not doomed. Visitors from other countries besides Canada haven’t totally stopped booking summer and fall vacations in the United States. Sales of tickets for summer travel from the rest of the world are down by only 2% compared with the same period last year, according to data on the 25 most popular routes collected by the Airlines Reporting Corporation. The ARC tracks two-thirds of global airline ticket sales.
That said, travel industry analysts assert that there still is extraordinary uncertainty among most travelers—Americans included—about how travel and tourism policies and prices could change in the weeks and months ahead.
ARC’s chief commercial officer, Steve Soloman, says he’s sure about one thing. “What we’re seeing is a shift in where people are going, more than a shift in them not traveling at all.”
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