Canadians steer clear of US as travel from north falls for seventh month
Months of aggressive rhetoric from the White House have prompted widespread boycotts of US products by Canadians, who have also sworn off visits to their southern neighbour amid lingering feelings of betrayal and anger.
Statistics Canada said on Monday that the number of Canadian residents who made a return trip to the US by car dropped 36.9% in July 2025, compared with the same month in 2024.
There were declines in air travel as well, where Canadian residents returning from the US by commercial airlines dropped by 25.8% in July compared with the previous year.
Those figures have been broadly attributed to fury over Trump's antagonistic trade policies and threats to annex Canada, but they have also been fed by the country's persistent cost of living crisis, said Isabelle Salle, an associate professor of behavioral macroeconomics at the University of Ottawa.
'There is a growing disconnect between the economy in Canada and the state of the economy in the US,' she said. The Canadian dollar is faring poorly compared with the greenback and many Canadian families are feeling squeezed by persistently high housing costs and wages which are lagging behind inflation, said Salle.
'People have directly lost in terms of purchasing power,' Salle said. The uncertainty of the trade war and fears about future job losses are keeping people from spending money on leisure now just in case, she added.
Meanwhile, US residents' travel to Canada by land declined by 7.4% in July compared with the same month in 2024, but visits by air increased very slightly by 0.7%, amounting to 714,700 US residents.
'When they have some green signals [in the US economy], our lights are rather red,' said Salle. 'The broad picture does not show two economies that are coordinated in the same direction.'
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