Trump tanks tourism.
This is particularly true of Republicans and MAGA,
self-identified “real Americans” who consider anyone criticizing the US to be a
commie traitor.
Trump takes this a step further by declaring anything he
touches to be the biggest, best thing ever. He is convinced he has made America
great again, and that the whole world now respects and fears the United States
accordingly.
This is, of course, complete nonsense.
Since Trump has returned to office, global approval of the
United States has plummeted. This is seen as far back as polling data from
early 2025, and it’s likely much worse now.
When Pew Research asked people across 36 countries this
spring if they trusted various world leaders to do the right thing, Trump was
trusted least — less than Putin, Xi Jinping, and Netanyahu. Gallup found that
world opinion of the United States has fallen to its lowest point in 20 years.
Ouch.
Nope.
For the first time in 50 years, the US experienced negative
net migration in 2025. The country isn’t letting much of anyone in, and
record numbers of people are choosing to be somewhere else if they have the
option (including myself and my family).
There are far more who would leave if the opportunity was there. Last year Gallup found that 20 percent of all Americans would move out of the US if they could, and 40 percent of young women would prefer to leave.
A Williams Institute study found that 45 percent of transgender people would like to escape elsewhere, and 75 percent of scientists are considering leaving the United States.
The situation is
similar to how a lot of the people who built the atomic bomb weren’t
from the US originally, because a certain guy with a mustache made it clear
that their kind weren’t welcome in Germany anymore.
At the same time, polling
shows that the percentage of people globally who would want to move to the
US as their top choice has plummeted.
Americans are still
broadly supportive of Republican “law and order” policies designed to sweep
the streets of criminals, homeless people, addicts, and lesbian soccer moms.
Many are surprised that foreigners don’t think that this has made America a
safer and cleaner place to visit. Surely the presence of ICE, National Guard
troops, and police authorized to use lethal force on a whim must make the US as
safe and orderly as Singapore or Japan, right?
The actual data shows that the United States is on its way
to being as unpopular a tourist destination as Russia, and for roughly the same
reasons. In both countries, a tourist who runs afoul of government officials
might spend the next six months in a freezing warehouse without legal counsel,
eating moldy bologna sandwiches and praying that they won’t die of disease,
neglect, or just an old-fashioned beating by the guards.
The US hosted this year’s FIFA World Cup, which happens only
once every four years and involves the most popular sport in the world.
Attendance at games was high, but it was driven
primarily by domestic audiences. International travel to the United States fell
far below expectations due to strict travel restrictions, high costs, visa
hurdles, and visitors’ fear of dealing with Trump’s private anti-foreigner Sturmabteilung.
Applicants faced $185 visitor visa fees, mandatory in-person
interviews, and strict vetting policies that sometimes included social media
account reviews. Even with the introduction of the FIFA Pass priority
scheduling system, a visa did not guarantee border entry. Nearly 80 percent of
hotels in US host cities missed their booking forecasts for June and July,
leading to room block cancellations and a broader decline in expected
international arrivals.
The United States is the only place where tourism has been
dropping. There are expected to be two
million fewer visitors in 2026 than in 2025, down 10 million since the high
water mark of 70 million in 2018. There was a 2 percent year-over-year drop in
June, a 7 percent drop in July, and an 11 percent decrease in August. The
numbers suggest that the collapse of the United States’ tourism industry is
accelerating, thanks to Trump, MAGA, the GOP’s extreme xenophobia, and their
belief that there’s no problem you can’t brutalize your way out of.
By comparison, travel to Canada from overseas countries
increased by nearly 4 percent in July 2026, building on a 5.1 percent
year-over-year increase recorded in June. And Americans, despite Trump’s
insistence that Canada is the nastiest country on earth, are flocking to visit
their more civilized northern neighbor. American arrivals to Canada rose by over
9 percent in July compared to July 2025, despite high fuel and hotel
prices. Even tourism
in China is up by 20 percent, despite the increasingly repressive regime of
President Xi.
Less appealing than Berlin 1934
Perhaps the bleakest factoid is that the US is even less
popular as a tourist destination than Nazi Germany in the 1930s. Hitler tried
to depict Germany as clean, orderly, and safe, despite political repression,
destruction of democracy, persecuting queers and Jews, and paramilitary
beatings of “undesirables”.
According to the United States Holocaust Museum:
In 1933 alone, American embassies and consulates reported at
least 36 individual physical attacks on American citizens in Germany. Uniformed
Nazi brownshirts or German mobs beat Americans — tourists, businessmen, and
expatriates living in Germany for work or marriage — or effectively kidnapped
or arrested them. The attacks were almost all unprovoked or for such “offenses”
as failing to salute the German flag, for taking photographs, or for failing to
submit to extortion.
The US Consul General in Berlin, George Messersmith, and US
Ambassador William E. Dodd aggressively protested these actions directly to
Reich ministers and Chancellor Hitler. Because Germany was heavily reliant on
foreign trade and tourism, Hitler personally assured Ambassador Dodd in October
1933 that “strong measures” would be taken to protect foreigners and that the
police would intervene to prevent future attacks. To avoid violence, many shops
in Germany began doing a brisk business selling lapel pins embossed with
foreign flags to tourists, letting passersby know they were foreigners exempt
from the rule requiring “roman
salutes.”
Despite the beatings, campaigns in the United States
contributed to a significant rise in international travel, including an alleged
doubling
of American tourists between 1934 and 1937. Foreign tourism grew steadily
through the 1930s (including a major boost during the 1936 Berlin Olympics),
convincing many international visitors that the regime was benign or even
progressive.
The Nazi regime used the Reichsbahnzentrale für den
Deutschen Reiseverkehr (RDV) (German Railroads Information Office) to
market Germany globally as a modern, affordable, and cultural destination. By
1938, the RDV operated 31 offices across 26 countries. Promotional
materials deliberately portrayed the country as peaceful, safe, and
non-aggressive to mask or downplay the regime’s brutality and anti-Semitic
policies.
Conversely, ICE’s brutal treatment of tourists and other
foreigners traveling on visas (including Germans
and Canadians)
has elicited no response from the Trump administration. Diplomatic protests are
ignored. Unlike the German example of tourists wearing pins to avoid a beating
or detention in a concentration camp, wearing foreign flag pins in the US would
invite such treatment, at least in some parts of the country.
Trump always wants to be seen as the biggest and best. He
lies about everything, including his height and weight. He even strokes his ego
by cheating at golf. But we’ll give him credit: only he could make his own
country look like a less attractive place to visit than Nazi Germany.
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