Foreign tourism to the United States has dropped in five of the last six months. According to experts, this decline is due to the rhetoric and restrictive policies of President Donald Trump, says Al Jazeera.
The decrease in the number of foreign visitors to the United States persists, caused by the policies implemented by the Trump administration, mainly due to the effect they have on tourists, creating fear and lack of confidence to travel to the country, fearing that more restrictive measures or even stricter measures will be announced.
Preliminary government data recently released shows that, in July alone, 3% fewer foreigners visited the US compared to the previous year. The numbers show a trend observed in almost every month since Trump took office at the end of January. In five of the six months, the US registered a drop in the number of foreign visitors.
Experts and some local authorities point to Trump’s tariffs, the crackdown on immigration, and repeated threats of annexation of Canada and Greenland by the US as the reasons that have driven away travelers from other parts of the world.
Ryan Bourne, an economist at the Cato Institute, told Al Jazeera that the drop in tourism is linked to both Trump’s rhetoric and policies.
“[The decrease] can be put down to the president’s trade wars and some of the fallout about fears about getting ensnared in immigration enforcement.”
Tourism Economics predicted last week that the US would have 8.2% fewer international arrivals in 2025, a less pessimistic number than the previous forecast, which predicted a 9.4% drop. Still, these numbers are well below the number of foreign visitors to the country before the COVID-19 pandemic.
But Tourism Economics calculates that public sentiment, reflected in the drop in airline bookings, will be maintained. The July 2025 figures released by the US government do not include visitors from neighboring Canada and Mexico. According to Tourism Economics figures, 25% fewer tourists traveled from Canada to the US compared to the same period in 2024.
Interestingly, the reverse flow was greater for the first time in two decades. The number of US residents who traveled by car to Canada in June and July was greater than the reverse, according to Canada’s national statistics agency. Statistics Canada revealed that, in the last 20 years, this only occurred in two months during the pandemic.
US government data shows that travel from Central America grew 3% through May and from South America 0.7%, compared to a 2.3% drop in Western Europe. Mexico is one of the few situations where there was an increase in tourism to the US.
The number of visitors from China fell by almost 14%. Geopolitical tensions, the trade war, and Trump’s (later revoked) criticism of Chinese students have heightened concerns among Chinese tourists.
The $250 “visa integrity fee,” scheduled to take effect on October 1st, is another obstacle for travelers from countries that are not visa-exempt. Visitors from Mexico, Argentina, India, Brazil, and China face a total visa cost of $442, one of the highest visitor fees in the world, according to the U.S. Travel Association.
For the U.S. tourism sector, but also for those working abroad with tourists who might choose the U.S. as a destination, all fees will increase travel budgets. In May, the World Travel & Tourism Council projected that the US would be the only country among the 184 studied where spending by foreign visitors would fall by 2025.
International visitor spending in the U.S. is not expected to reach $169 billion this year, compared to $181 billion in 2024, according to forecasts from the WT&TC.
The numbers indicate that the “global appeal of the US is diminishing,” stated the WT&TC.
