more U.S. residents came to Canada that month than Canadian residents returned from the U.S<\/a>. It\u2019s a feat that\u2019s only happened one other time in roughly the last two decades, if you exclude the COVID-19 pandemic outliers of August and September 2021.<\/p>\nThe same imbalance happened in June this year, but before that it hadn\u2019t occurred since June 2006.<\/p>\n
The most recent shift has come as Canadians have doubled down on patriotism, skipping travelling to the U.S. because President Donald Trump continues to pummel the country with tariffs on goods crossing the border.<\/p>\n
In July, higher tariffs were in place for goods that were not exempt under the United States-Mexico-Canada free-trade agreement.<\/p>\n
But that wasn\u2019t the only factor at play, said Wayne Smith, director of the Institute for Hospitality and Tourism Research at Toronto Metropolitan University.<\/p>\n
Canadians were also nervously watching their country\u2019s economy, U.S. immigration agents arrest undocumented migrants and poor exchange rates.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou put that all together and … you\u2019re going to see a big reduction in tourism as a result,\u201d Smith said.<\/p>\n
That big reduction amounted to a 32.4 per cent drop in the number of Canadian-resident return trips from the United States in July. About 2.6 million trips meeting that criteria were made, Statistics Canada said.<\/p>\n
Smith thinks those that eschewed the U.S. probably explored Canada instead.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen people get nervous, they tend to stay closer to home,\u201d he said. \u201cThey tend to do more drive destinations. They tend to stay more in province and do shorter trips.\u201d<\/p>\n
Numbers indicate Americans likely didn\u2019t ascribe to the same school of thought. The number of trips to Canada by U.S. residents fell by only 3.0 per cent compared with a year ago, to almost 3.3 million.<\/p>\n
Some of them ventured across the border because they felt Canada needs to be supported, while others didn\u2019t think twice about the geopolitical storm, Smith said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s business as usual for most Americans,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Other nations more than made up for the dip in travel from U.S. residents.<\/p>\n
Statistics Canada said the number of trips to Canada by overseas residents in July was up 10.3 per cent from the same month last year.<\/p>\n
Arrivals in July from those in Europe and Asia both posted increases of 10.3 per cent compared with a year ago.<\/p>\n
The top three countries of residence for overseas visitors were the U.K. followed by France and India.<\/p>\n
The number of Canadian-resident return trips from overseas in July increased 8.3 per cent compared with a year ago.<\/p>\n
Smith expects July patterns to continue when August numbers are released. He said the bigger test will come in the cooler months, when Canadian snowbirds typically head to Florida and other warm U.S. locales.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese are people spending tens of thousands of dollars to visit the U.S. and they\u2019re doing everyday things like going shopping, grocery shopping and to the doctor, which has a large economic impact,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf the snowbirds don\u2019t decide not to go back … they\u2019re going to feel it pretty heavily.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 23, 2025.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"OTTAWA \u2014 Canadians might be shunning trips to the U.S. as the tariff war trundles along, but Americans…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":164200,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[45,49,48,46],"class_list":["post-164624","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-economy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164624","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=164624"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164624\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/164200"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=164624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=164624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=164624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}