Most summers, Old Orchard Beach, Maine, welcomes a lot of Canadian visitors, who typically make up about 40 percent of the coastal town’s tourists. But this year will be different. Since taking office, President Donald Trump and his administration have mocked Canada’s leaders, imposed steep tariffs on its goods, subjected its citizens to more stringent visitor-registration requirements, and threatened its very independence in juvenile ways. All of these moves have, entirely unsurprisingly, made their targets less likely to spend money in the United States. “Canadians are hurt. Canadians are angry,” then–Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said last month. “We’re going to choose not to go on vacation in Florida or Old Orchard Beach or wherever.”
Sure enough, in Old Orchard Beach, an inn owner with a substantial French Canadian clientele recently told CNN that most of his bookings have evaporated since Trump’s inauguration. Meanwhile, demand for flights from Canada to South Florida has fallen 20 percent compared with a year ago, the Miami Herald reported. Hotel owners in South Florida told the newspaper that business is down; Fort Lauderdale’s tourism-marketing agency said it is “deeply concerned” about the effects of potential travel restrictions.
Trump’s insistence on disrupting trade relationships with—and asserting dominance over—even America’s closest international partners is putting the economy at risk, and not just in tourist areas in South Florida and coastal Maine. The president sees other countries as moochers and takers, and he appears to believe that the United States is so powerful and its economy so strong that the rest of the world will simply bow to American demands. But sovereign nations and their citizens can make their own choices, and Canadians aren’t the only ones who bristle at threats and obvious signs of disrespect from the United States.
People around the world are getting the message that the U.S. resents foreigners who are trying to cross into its territory. Amid Trump’s immigration crackdown, the United Nations recently urged staffers at the organization’s New York headquarters to carry their work ID and copies of their passports and visas. Stories circulate about what the administration calls “enhanced vetting.” News outlets in the U.S. and abroad are reporting anecdotes about foreign nationals who are held for weeks when they try to enter the country.
After some of its citizens were detained at the border recently, Germany updated its travel advisory to warn that a U.S. visa or entry waiver does not guarantee admittance. In other words: Buyer beware. Last month, other European democracies similarly revised their guidance to travelers who lawfully visit the U.S. The United Kingdom warns that U.S. officials “set and enforce entry rules strictly” and that travelers could be subject to arrest and detention. Some advisories warn members of the LGBTQ community about increasing hostility in the United States and potential pitfalls awaiting people whose passports record a gender identity different from their birth sex.
These advisories are vague. They do not instruct anyone not to visit the United States, as they might Iran or North Korea. But they are acknowledging that Trump’s border-enforcement efforts are unpredictable enough to have introduced a new variable in tourism decisions. The Trump administration may claim to be fighting illegal immigration, but in its aggressive roundups it is also making grievous errors. As The Atlantic’s Nick Miroff recently reported, it admitted to deporting one man to a megaprison in El Salvador “because of an administrative error” and insisted that he had no recourse in American courts.
Other democratic nations have an obligation to protect their citizens. We didn’t particularly worry about traveling to the United States before, these countries are warning, but now we do. And we think you should too.
Over the years, the United States has benefited immensely from being a reliable global presence and a welcoming destination with predictable rules and regulations for visitors. That reputation is now in danger, purely because of Trump’s strategy of dumping on other countries. A new study by the research company Tourism Economics is anticipating a 5 percent decline in foreign visits to the United States due to tariff wars and “polarizing Trump Administration rhetoric” and policies. (This study was done before “Liberation Day,” when the president imposed tariffs against almost all countries in the world.)
For every action the administration takes, other countries will respond according to their own values and the demands of their own domestic politics. “The old relationship we had with the United States based on deepening integration of our economies and tight security and military cooperation is over,” Canada’s new prime minister, Mark Carney, recently warned.
That’s become all too clear in Old Orchard Beach, where business owners brace for the consequences of Trump’s picking a fight with Canada. Chambers of commerce in tourist towns are scrambling to attract more U.S. visitors. But the tourism season in Maine is short, and the numbers this year are bad.
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