Make America Hated Again

Jen Donahue can’t help but wonder whether a fellow skier took a bit of subtle revenge on her during a recent trip to Canada. Donahue and her husband, who are from California, took a trip up to Whistler, British Columbia, in March to enjoy the slopes. On their very first gondola ride up the mountain, they were seated next to a Canadian couple. While almost everyone else they met on the trip was very nice, the woman in the couple, Donahue said, was “straight mean.” She was angry about the US’s recent antagonism toward Canada, insisting Donahue and her husband make sure they buy Canadian products while on their visit and expressing dismay at the state of political affairs between the two countries.

“I think they’re taking it really personally. She felt, personally, ‘How could you do this to us? We’ve been so kind to you,'” Donahue said.

The woman’s husband eventually got her to lay off, but before they parted ways, she gave the pair of American travelers some advice on which ski run to try. “She sent us down the most awful way, and we were like, ‘Do you think she did that on purpose?'” Donahue said.

The spring and summer travel season is upon us. It’s a time when people are excited to take a much-needed break and head out on vacation, in many cases, to a foreign destination. This year, American travelers are confronting a novel political scenario as President Donald Trump has taken a hostile stance toward countries that have historically been considered strong allies, such as Canada and those within the European Union. He’s put in place widespread tariffs. His administration has issued loud public complaints about trade and defense relations with Europe. The president keeps joking about taking Greenland from Denmark and making Canada the 51st US state in a way that seems increasingly not jokey.

For many Americans living and traveling abroad, their home nation turning into a global frenemy is making things uncomfortable. Some are rethinking their travel plans, and those who remain undeterred are bracing for some thorny conversations. In recent days, I talked to tourists and expats about how tensions were playing out in their journeys, and the consensus was that while the situation isn’t dire, it’s making things awkward. People travel to get away from reality, but this year, they’re having a harder time achieving that. As the saying goes, wherever you go, there you are — or, rather, there are your country’s politics.

Donahue goes to Whistler once a year or so, and before this past trip, she had never had a political conversation in Canada. This time around, politics came up often — people would ask about it, they’d all hesitantly laugh, and she and her husband would explain they think it “sucks,” too. “Everybody else almost felt sorry for us,” she said. “It’s embarrassing.”

Inbound travel to the US from many foreign nations is expected to take a hit this year. Flight bookings from Canada to the States have plunged this year, and Canadian airlines such as Air Canada and WestJet have reduced flights to US destinations. Bookings from Europe to the US have fallen, too. Foreign travelers are turned off by America’s inward turn and adversarial stance. They’ve also seen stories about tougher border security and travelers being detained upon entry into the US. Some countries, such as the UK and Germany, have put in place warnings for their citizens regarding travel to the US.

American tourists may also be scaling back some of their international travel plans. An analysis from Cirium, an aviation analytics company, of third-party air travel bookings from major US hubs to major European cities found that 12.6% fewer reservations had been made so far this year for June, July, and August compared with the same period last year. The Airlines Reporting Corp., which provides air transaction data, found that both international and domestic flight sales fell in February for US-based travel agencies compared to a year ago. International sales fell less than domestic sales, but both declines are a bad sign, given booking habits.

I’m not bringing the usual pride that I have as an American.

“Because of the deeper advance discounts and higher dollar price rise closer to day of departure, summer international tends to book sooner than domestic,” Bob Mann, an aviation analyst, said in an email. He added that at a JPMorgan analyst-investor conference in March, multiple executives brought up poor recent sales, including international and transatlantic. “While one month is not a trend, it could signal an inflection point,” he said.

To be sure, if Americans do scale back on air travel this summer, it may not be because they’re worried about politics. Virgin Atlantic has said it’s seeing a slowdown in travel from the US to the UK, citing economic uncertainty. Consumers are concerned about the economy and their own income prospects, and that may lead more of them to stay home or wait on booking. Still, for some travelers, the potential for negative international attitudes may be part of the calculation.

Even if American travelers aren’t staying home, they’re readying themselves for some questions and encounters they haven’t dealt with in the past. On the American travel guru Rick Steves’ blog, there’s lengthy advice (and debate) about whether Americans are still welcome abroad. Forums on Reddit have intense discussions among expats and tourists about what to anticipate, how to handle tense situations, and a sense that this year is different from years past.

Leila Bulling Towne, an executive coach in California, told me she’s rethinking her approach to her coming trips — she’s going to Mexico in the spring, and then in June, she’ll be in Germany and Belgium. She has both American and Irish passports, and she plans to travel with both, just in case. Bulling Towne has traveled a lot throughout her life, and she never imagined she’d be so worried about her reception as an American.

“I felt like in the past, the worst that maybe people assumed about Americans was that we were loud and maybe not polite in a church or didn’t respect someone or assumed everybody spoke English,” she said. “Now, I feel as if it’s a little I’m not bringing the usual pride that I have as an American.”

Bulling Towne has a lot of friends and family in Germany, and she said they’d been “quite honest that there’s a pretty good anti-American sentiment” there. “As much as I can try and speak the local German dialect, I’m still going to be loud and clear coming through as an American,” she added.

Carol Harms, a retired teacher from Seattle who’s doing a lot of foreign travel in her golden years, told me in an email she tries to avoid the topic of politics as much as possible in her journeys “because, on a personal level, I am ashamed” of the Trump administration’s actions. Politics talk doesn’t make for great vacation talk, but it’s sometimes unavoidable. She was just landing in London when the November election results came in, and people were “puzzled” — good-natured but curious.

In January, on a cruise in South Africa with a lot of Brits and Australians, almost everyone asked her about the election. “Most continued to be polite but were far less cheerful than before,” she said. “One outspoken Trump supporter was avoided by most people.” Now she’s in Japan, surrounded by many Brits and Australians once again, and their attitudes have changed drastically. “Many of them are simply angry,” she said, though it’s not directed at her personally. “They feel completely let down.”

Ambrose Conroy, a management consultant from California, has found that in many of his recent business travels, his clients in Ireland and Germany are clamoring for clarity.

“A lot of these people are people that I’ve known for a very long time. I think they’re confused and frustrated by US policy,” he said. “We’re dividing the world with this right now, and unless we get simplicity and clarity, it’s going to continue to be divisive.”

Some American expats find themselves in situations where their home country is now antagonizing the country they call home. That’s the case for Elizabeth Van Horne, an English teacher from Colorado who’s been living in France since 2013. Her French accent is good enough that people don’t immediately realize that she’s American, but once they figure it out, they inevitably want to talk Trump. “He’s front and center of all those conversations,” she said. Some people treat her with a sense of concern — as though she’s gone through a natural disaster. “The vibe that I’ve been getting is pity,” she added.

It’s hard to see the place you love so much is being viewed so negatively.

She teaches English to many business students, who historically have wanted to travel to the US to visit or even launch their careers. This year, she has only one student who wants to go to America; the rest are going to try Canada, Australia, or maybe the UK. A colleague who was going to visit the US with her family has decided to delay the trip.

“It’s hard to see the place you love so much is being viewed so negatively,” she said. Her infant son has dual citizenship, and she wonders what he’ll think of the US when he gets older, if he’ll want to visit or live there. “I don’t know what his view will be.”

The complications of traveling while American are hardly new. American tourists have long had a certain reputation — they’re loud, they’re entitled, they don’t try to speak the language. There’s a reason “tell people you’re Canadian” is common travel advice, even if that may be an urban legend. (Though reporting for this story, I did come across a Canadian who was worried people might confuse her for an American while she was abroad.)

Trump is hardly the only politician whose policies American travelers have had to reckon with while on the road. During the George W. Bush years, they had to answer questions about a president who launched two unpopular wars and a culture that tried to make “freedom fries” a thing. More recently, with President Joe Biden, they had to explain why a country would try to reelect someone so old and try to justify some of his global policies.

Tom Predhome, a retired consultant from New York who moved to Malta in 2023, said Trump is a “natural topic of conversation” when people meet Americans there, but he also found under Biden there was a lot of concern about foreign policy, namely, Israel and Gaza. “You’ll get people saying things like, ‘Oh, Biden or Trump is really no different,'” he said. In 2017, he and his wife were with a tour group in Borneo, where the topic of Trump was so contentious that things between some American tourists almost came to blows. He remembers telling the tour guide, “I’m sorry. I apologize for my country.”

The point of travel is that it’s supposed to be a way to leave worries behind. It’s a chance to escape from the day-to-day, to forget for a while about obligations and work and responsibilities — and, in theory, politics. I don’t know about you, but my idea of a good time on vacation is not lying on the beach and chatting about how Republicans are going to keep their small-margin coalition together as they negotiate the next reconciliation bill.

But this travel season, Americans may have no choice but to face some of the Trump-composed music and deal with some less-than-friendly hosts. As much as Donahue was a little flabbergasted that the Canadian skier had sent her and her husband down a bad path, they heeded her advice with regard to what else to do while they were there. They bought Canadian products, including sweatshirts from a very obvious local brand. They tipped extra. Her husband wore the same sweatshirt with a Canadian flag and a beaver on it every day. “We wanted to blend in,” she said.

Emily Stewart is a senior correspondent at Business Insider, writing about business and the economy.