Bruce Newman wanted to surprise his wife with a trip for her 75th birthday, and the New Brunswick, Canada, retiree thought he had it all planned, recalling their visit to New York a decade ago when she turned 65, and they celebrated with a Broadway show.
But last year, as he began to map out the trip, he felt stung first by President Donald Trump’s decision to impose tariffs, and again when talk of re-christening Canada the 51st state was bandied about.
The final straw, he said, was watching — with horror — as ICE battled American citizens in Minnesota. He booked a trip to London instead, where he and his wife, Helen Jean, saw “The Book of Mormon” in early March.
“I actually think we are at war with the US and people don’t realize it,” Newman said in an interview with CNN. “It’s an economic war.”
Newman is one of millions of Canadians who have ceased traveling to the US since Trump took office last year.
In 2024, more than 20 million Canadians visited the US, according to the U.S. Travel Association — more than any other nationality.
But final figures posted on Friday by the US National Travel and Tourism Office (NTTO), show a 21% drop in Canadian arrivals last year compared with 2024 — representing about 4.2 million fewer Canadian visitors.
Gone, for many Canadians, are the splashy visits to New York City, the ritual summer stays in Maine, the Boston Red Sox and Seattle Mariner games, and the months spent under the Florida sun golfing or at Disney World. Some Canadians who live close to the US are even forgoing regular cross-border shopping trips to Maine, Michigan, New York and other border states where they once could purchase items for much less.
In the space of one year, a friendship between the two countries that dates back several centuries and includes a shared culture has been ruptured, possibly with permanent repercussions.
Some Canadians say they don’t know when they will come back to the US.
“We don’t feel welcome to cross that border,” said Susan Morell, a retired government communications director who canceled a 2025 trip to Disney World with her grandchildren.
Morell, whose ancestors left New York for Canada in 1783 following the American Revolution, added, “The American people are finally starting to see we are not just an extension of their country.”
The trips Canadians have canceled impact numerous regions of the US and rob many states of tourism dollars that have instead gone to other places, including Mexico and Europe.
Todd Johnson is in Mexico now. That’s because he loves playing golf, and his dream was to spend six weeks golfing in Arizona once he stopped working. The Saskatchewan resident has taken golf vacations in the States for years, visiting resorts in both Arizona and Florida for fun-filled trips with his buddies.
After 40 years working in the HVAC industry, he finally retired last year. But instead of visiting Phoenix this winter as he’d long planned, he and his wife went to the Yucatán Peninsula.
At a rental near Cancun, Johnson said he was surrounded by Canadians doing the same thing — spending part of the winter months in a warm locale that wasn’t in the US.
“My friends are the same way. They’re not going to the States,” Johnson said in an interview during his six-week stay. “We’re not giving America any of our money.”
He added, “We will vote with our wallets.”
In 2024, the average Canadian visitor arriving by air stayed 7.34 nights and spent $1,090 while in the United States, according to NTTO figures.
The political rhetoric aimed at ridiculing Canada bothers Johnson. Like many Canadians, he can’t fathom why some American voters elected Trump twice.
But it’s something else that he considers mind-blowing, and which makes it much easier to cancel travel plans to the US.
“The stuff that happened in Minnesota — we’re horrified by that,” he said, referring to the deaths of Americans Renée Good and Alex Pretti at the hands of ICE officers. “We don’t want to get caught up in anything.”
That sums up April Scott’s feelings, too. Scott and her husband won a five-day cruise on Norwegian Cruise Line last year. But when they learned their only option was to depart from Florida, they quietly walked away.
It would have been nice to visit the Caribbean courtesy of a free cruise, but Scott couldn’t chance it.
“It is not that far-fetched that we fly down to Florida and all of a sudden Trump says he hates Canada and he seizes our passports, and we’re stuck,” said Scott, who lives in British Columbia.
Similarly, she decided against a family trip to Disney World with her children and her sister’s family, even though they’ve had several wonderful vacations at the amusement park in Florida before. The 17-person group will instead go to Disneyland Paris later this year.
Some Canadians aren’t merely canceling trips. Some of them are selling real estate they had already bought in the US for their retirement.
When Anita and Tom Hitchcock bought a condo in Florida in 2023, they began renovating their second home right away.
But after Trump was re-elected, the Hitchcocks, who live in New Brunswick, began to question whether they wanted to spend their hard-earned money on American products and services for the property in Lake Wales, some 50 miles south of Orlando.
“You’re sitting in Florida and you’re spending your retirement money there, not at home, and at some point, you just have to wonder,” Tom said of the couple’s thinking.
They were especially incensed when President Trump referred to former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as “Governor Trudeau” in a tweet. Tom also questioned Trump’s belittling of Canada with taunts, and support for the separatist movement in the province of Alberta.
“Now you’re trying to influence Canadian domestic policy and that’s not cool,” he said.
Anita said it shows Americans didn’t really appreciate Canadians.
“I always thought, ‘We are nice neighbors, we go and spend our money there and then we go home,’” she said. “We Canadians are happy to go home. I always thought that was respected and appreciated.”
So they sold their Florida condo last year and spent the winter traveling through South America.
“I find this whole situation sad — sad and unnecessary,” Anita said in a Zoom interview from Santiago, Chile, in early March.
Some Canadians also say they are eliminating business travel to the US.
Gilles Heroux has been attending the InfoComm audiovisual industry convention for decades. But this year it’s taking place in Las Vegas, and Heroux said he won’t be there.
“With Trump, every week there is an insult,” he said.
Heroux, a Montreal video conferencing equipment integrator, said he opted to attend a similar trade show in Barcelona in February instead.
“I no longer have confidence in the current political direction of the United States, and I do not wish to support, through travel or purchasing power, a system that I fundamentally disagree with,” Heroux said.
Some Canadians are still visiting the US. With the long winters up North, and the heavy snowfall this year, the lure of Florida remains strong.
Stuart Kinsinger and his wife, Laurel, are staying in Sarasota, Florida, which they’ve been visiting for decades. Kinsinger, who lives near Toronto and teaches healthcare ethics, said he’s an independent and Americans are entitled to their own political opinions.
He also said the weather in Florida right now is beautiful, and he enjoys running and pickleball there.
“We love it too much here to consider somewhere else,” he said.
But compared to past years, he says it’s noticeable how few Canadians are visiting.
Kinsinger visited the US in August, and he said that visit was also light on fellow Canadians.
“We were in Maine last summer and we were the only Canadian vehicle that we saw, and that’s high season,” he said. “That really surprised us.”
Observers say there are few precedents in the history of relations between the two countries, partly because the verbal attacks against Canada have been so remarkable.
“This is really unique so it’s difficult to say how long it will last,” said Xavier Delgado, a Canada-US analyst associated with the nonpartisan think tank, the Wilson Center, in Washington, DC.
He said the White House doesn’t appear motivated to tone down anti-Canada rhetoric, which he said Canadians see as “an insult.”
“It is really the rhetoric that has been the wedge between the two countries,” he said. “Until that is eliminated, I don’t see the situation improving.”
The shift away from the US isn’t without sacrifices, Canadians say.
Newman, who visited London instead of New York, said the decision required costlier airfare.
“This is a lot more cumbersome,” he said, although he said overall, the trip was wonderful.
Other Canadian families who decided against going to Disney have had tough choices to make. After canceling their trip with their grandchildren, the Morells considered going to Mexico, but the violence stemming from drug cartels ultimately convinced them it wasn’t safe.
Some Europeans have also felt stung by Trump’s policies, including the unprecedented demands over the sovereignty of Greenland.
Overall, arrivals to the US from overseas fell 2.5% in 2025, according to figures from the National Travel and Tourism Office. Factoring in the significant drop in Canadian visitors and a 6% increase in visitors from Mexico, overall international visitors to the US dropped by 5.5% in 2025, according to NTTO figures.
That dip in arrivals to the United States came as most destinations worldwide posted increases, according to UN Tourism’s World Tourism Barometer. Globally, international tourist arrivals grew 4% in 2025.
Delgado said the real test lies ahead: the summer World Cup games, which will be played in the US, Canada and Mexico.
“Will citizens from all over the world flock to Canada and Mexico instead because they see them as more open than the US?” he asked rhetorically.
Nonetheless, the relationship between the US and Canada has few parallels.
The two share the longest unprotected border in the world, at more than 5,500 miles. They also share a language — English — and a history of colonization under the British. And for Canada, the US is the market for more than 60% of its exports.
All of these aspects make the rift between the two countries especially painful.
The Canadians interviewed by CNN don’t take the rupture lightly, and it’s caused some to re-examine their relationship to the US.
“The breakdown of our partnership with the US is really confusing to Canadians,” Johnson said. “We are your brothers and sisters, and now our family is fractured because of one man and his misguided policies.”
Many Canadians have real family across the border.
Dave Morell grew up visiting relatives in Maine; his mother was from a town on the Maine-Canada border. The retired sports broadcaster has attended countless Boston Red Sox games and New York Rangers games. Not anymore.
“It’s unfortunate because we loved going. And we loved the American people we met,” he said.
His wife, Susan, is hurt that so many Americans can forget the assistance provided by Canadians in moments of difficulty like 9/11 and the Iran hostage crisis in 1980.
For Heroux, the issue goes beyond attending professional conferences. He sees the rightward shift in the US as nothing less than “the fall of the American Empire.”
“For me now, America is a bad guy like Russia,” he said.
Johnson, on the other hand, said even though he’s in Mexico now, he hopes to one day return to the US. He describes the rift more charitably, though the effect still isn’t flattering.
He compared America’s political turn to “a drug-addicted family member that we hope to have recover and come back to the fold someday soon.”
“We know that you’ll come back to reality, hopefully without too much collateral damage,” he said.
