Canadian Tourists, Boycotts and the Eastern U.P.: An Update on Summer 2025

Soon after the 2024 election, President-elect Trump made clear his desire that Canada should become the 51st state. A move that Canada’s prime minister told the President in April 2025, “will never happen.” Despite the prime minister’s statement, the President continues to reiterate his annexation idea, most recently in a June 29 interview on Fox’s Sunday Morning Futures.  A month later, the President signed an Executive Order increasing the tariff on Canada from 25% to 35% on goods not covered by the existing trade agreement between the U.S., Mexico and Canada (USMCA). A weakened Canadian dollar is one indirect consequence of the tariff policy, resulting in the U.S. becoming a more expensive destination than in the past. Finally, the reporting of high-profile searches of Canadian visitors’ electronic devices at border crossings and incarceration at ICE detention facilities have helped deter travel to the U.S. Against this backdrop, Canada’s former prime minister urged his fellow citizens to consider taking domestic vacations instead of visiting the U.S. This article examines the data surrounding the impact these national events have on tourism, focusing a spotlight on the Upper Peninsula.

Since the beginning of 2025, inbound Canadian travel to the U.S. has declined for six consecutive months. The effect of fewer Canadians on business activity is particularly noticeable in border states. Popular tourist destinations along the northern border with Canada all report seeing fewer Canadian tourists this year. Hotel and Motel owners in Old Orchard Beach, and other Maine coastal communities began reporting a sharp increase in cancellations from Canadians in March. In the Upper Midwest, businesses in the town of Grand Marais, MN also noted fewer Canadian visitors in March. In Kalispel, MT at the western entrance to Glacier National Park, local businesses reported a 46 percent drop in Canadian credit card spending for the first four months of the year; in Vermont, Canadian credit card transactions for May 2025 were down 56 percent compared with 2024. 

When people are upset about an issue, boycotting is one of the first tools readily available to consumers – the choice to buy or not buy from certain brands or countries. In this instance, many Canadians are boycotting purchasing American products and avoiding travel to the U.S. A recent nationwide survey of consumer sentiment by the Bank of Canada found that 55 percent of respondents were altogether avoiding or spending less on vacations to U.S. destinations. Research indicates that travel boycotts are unlikely to alter a country’s policies (e.g. sanctions and restrictions on travel to Russia have had little impact on its foreign policy), but they can affect a country’s tourism sector, particularly for small businesses.

Earlier this year Rural Insights reported the number of travelers crossing the International Bridge at Sault Ste Marie into Michigan in the first four months of this year was down 22 percent, compared with the same period in 2024. The remainder of this article updates the latest cross border statistics and further examines the decline in interest among Canadians in the eastern U.P. as a tourist destination.

Cross Border Travel and Tourism

The number of people crossing from Canada into the United States by land in the first six months of 2025 is down by 4.5 million or 19% compared with the same period in 2024, according to US Customs and Border Protection statistics. In the Upper Peninsula, at the Sault Ste Marie crossing about 113,000 fewer travelers from Canada crossed the International Bridge, during the same period, a 25 percent fall (Table 1).

This travel downturn is also reflected by a similar drop in U.P. tourism-related google searches by people living in Canada. Google trends allow researchers to analyze the use of a particular search term over time based upon where the search was initiated from (in this case Canada). At the broadest level, Canadian interest in ‘Michigan’s Upper Peninsula’ has declined. During the first six months of 2024, 594 searches were initiated, for the same period in 2025 the number dropped to 442 (Table 2). A similar pattern is evident for the search ‘Sault Ste Marie, Michigan.’ 

Google trends allow searches within a particular category (e.g. Sault Ste Marie, Michigan Shopping). Not surprisingly, there were fewer searches in 2025 than in 2024 for “shopping.” Mackinac Island receives the largest number of tourists in the eastern U.P. with more than one million visitors annually. Canadian interest in the Island and the Grand Hotel has declined, while searches for places in the vicinity of Sault Ste Marie, Canada have risen in the first six months of 2025 compared with 2024 (Table 2). These data suggest that some Canadians are heeding the advice of their former prime minister by exploring more of their own country and avoiding the U.S.

Implications of Fewer Canadian visitors for Mackinac and Chippewa counties

Fewer travelers from Canada and less interest in tourism-related activities suggests that unless Canadians are replaced by other tourists, the 2025 summer tourist season will not be as successful as 2024 for Sault Ste Marie and Mackinac Island. Employment data for Chippewa and Mackinac counties (Table 3a, 3b), show that total employment in Mackinac County is higher for the first six months of 2025 compared with 2024. These data also illustrate the strong seasonal component to the County’s economy, with more than 2,000 people employed in the summer months compared with winter. Employment is down for 2025’s second quarter in Chippewa, suggesting that the decline in cross border traffic at the Soo is having an impact on the hospitality sector. Mackinac County appears to be somewhat immune from the effects of fewer Canadians crossing the border, as Mackinac Island continues to reap accolades from domestic travelers, winning the No. 1 Best Summer Travel Destination by USA Today readers for three consecutive years. Using Mackinac bridge traffic counts as an indirect indicator of travel to the eastern Upper Peninsula, it’s clear that despite the drop off in traffic in the early part of the year, the first part of the summer has seen a rebound in traffic (Table 4). 

Conclusions

Most consumer boycotts typically peter out after some time. In this instance, avoiding travel to the U.S. may persist for a while as Canadians travel to other countries or explore their own. In the Upper Peninsula, Mackinac County’s robust growth in employment suggests it has been largely unaffected by the boycott thus far, while the effects are more noticeable in Sault Ste Marie and surrounding Chippewa county. What is clear, based upon the experiences of other border communities, is that small tourist business owners are likely to be most affected by Canadian visitors’ reduced spending.