Canadians have been less than thrilled with US president Donald Trump’s calls to annex their country and make it the 51st state. Add to that the on-again, off-again imposition of higher tariffs on Canadian lumber, steel and automotive parts, as well as Trump’s claim that the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement (which he negotiated during his first term in office) is now “irrelevant”. All this has soured relations between the neighbours and historical allies. Hard feelings have led to a drop of more than 30% in Canadian tourism to the US, impacting the real-estate and hospitality markets as well as arts and cultural institutions.
Canadians represent the largest group of international tourists to the US, but the Trump administration’s rhetoric has made many of them feel unwelcome. New York City Tourism + Conventions counted approximately 983,000 Canadian visitors to the city in 2024—a number that dropped to 800,000 in 2025.
In Washington State, where more than half of all international visitors are Canadian, the tourism board saw a 26% decline in southbound border crossings in October 2025 compared to the same month in 2024. Scott Stulen, the director and chief executive of the Seattle Art Museum, recently told The Art Newspaper that there has been a 50% drop in Canadians visiting the Emerald City. (Even so, his museum’s numbers appear to have largely remained steady.) A bit further south, Oregon has also experienced a noticeable decline in visitors from Canada—21% fewer in 2025 compared to the year before.
Visitation from Canada was down about 30% in 2025, which is a significant and unfortunate decline
Visit Detroit
Canadian visitor numbers have dropped across the northern US, including in Detroit, located just across the Detroit River from its Canadian neighbour—the city of Windsor, Ontario. “Visitation from Canada was down about 30% in 2025, which is a significant and unfortunate decline,” says a spokesperson for Visit Detroit, the city’s travel and tourism bureau. While noting that the “bond between Detroit and Canada is a deep and enduring one, rooted in centuries of shared history, economic collaboration and cultural exchange”, he adds that “tariffs have created barriers, impacting both tourism and trade”.
Of course, it is not just Canadians who are thinking twice before visiting the US. Higher entrance fees at National Parks for non-residents, the increased cost of tourist visas and possible checks of travellers’ social-media accounts at border control have turned off visitors from around the world. For Canadians, the last period of growth in tourism to the US was November 2024. Since then, travel from Canada has declined by more than 25%.
US museums do not ask visitors for their passports, so they usually find out where people are from by asking. (Institutions with free admission tend to know less about their attendees, especially when the welcome counter can be skipped altogether.) “Whenever someone comes to the front desk, we ask for their zip code,” says Greg Norstrom, the director of visitor experience at the Portland Museum of Art (PMA) in Maine. “If they’re not from the US, we ask where they come from.” (Many museums across the country follow the same system.)
“Approximately half the number of Canadians came through in 2025 than the year before,” says Marcie Parker Griswold, the head of communications and audience engagement at the PMA. Their numbers dropped from 800 to 350.
In 2025, Canadians accounted for 4% of Maine’s total visitors; in 2024, that number was 7%. The decline led Maine’s governor, Janet Mills, to travel to Canada last summer to reaffirm the state’s ties with its northern neighbour.
The Ringling Museum in Sarasota, Florida, has seen a notable drop in Canadian visitorship Ron Blunt Architectural Photography
Tired of playing nice
An unofficial boycott of the US has been taking place across Canada. The most notable example is espoused by Ontario’s premier, Doug Ford, who publicly announced in December that he would forgo his regular winter holiday in Florida because of Trump’s tariffs, which have led to major layoffs in his province’s automotive and steel sectors. Florida, a popular destination in the winter, has experienced a dearth of Canadian visitors in the past year—a trend that will likely continue.
There has been a double-digit drop-off in non-stop Canada-US travellers since talk of Canada as the 51st state began
Ted Botimer, Visit Lauderdale
It has been reported that the American Automobile Association, which tracks travel in and around the US, found Canadian visits to the Sunshine State to be significantly lower in 2025 compared to the previous year—with 46% of likely visitors citing the Trump administration and 35% citing negative feelings towards the US overall as reasons for not going.
There are now fewer direct flights from Canada to Florida. “The data indicate that there has been a double-digit drop-off in non-stop Canada-US travellers since talk of Canada as the 51st state began in December of 2024,” says Ted Botimer, the vice president of research, strategy and revenue management at Visit Lauderdale (the official tourism bureau for the Greater Fort Lauderdale area).
As a result, Florida’s museums saw fewer Canadians among their visitors last year. Steven High, the executive director of the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota, compared figures from a couple of the museum’s most popular months of January and February. In January 2024, the Ringling welcomed 734 Canadian visitors; only 298 came in January 2025. In February 2024, Canadian visitors numbered 813; in February 2025, there were 411.
At Vizcaya Museum and Gardens in Miami, Canadian visitation was down by 40% in the peak winter months compared to 2024, but “there has been a drop in foreign visitation generally”, says John Settles, the museum’s director of visitor experience. However, the overall number of visitors has held steady for the most part—the result of a campaign the museum started during the Covid-19 pandemic to attract more Floridians. “Local visitation has balanced out the decrease in the number of foreign visitors,” Settles says.
Given the economic impact of fewer Canadian visitors, US cities and states close to the border have sought to bring their northern neighbours back with declarations of love. The Tourism bureau of Bellingham, Washington—a city roughly 50 miles south of Vancouver—created a “We ♥ Canadians” campaign in May 2025. The city of Buffalo, New York, ran both a “Buffalo Loves Canada” and a “Visit Buffalo” campaign last summer.
At Buffalo’s largest museum, the Buffalo AKG Art Museum, Canadian visitors had ranged between 7% and 10% of total visitorship in 2024 and previous years. Their numbers dropped by two-thirds to 2.4% in February 2025, according to Christine Goerss-Barton, its director of museum experiences. “I’m absolutely hearing the same thing from colleagues at other institutions,” she says. “Everybody is feeling it.”
Declarations of love can only go so far in a broken relationship.
- Read the full results of our 2025 Visitor Figures survey here
