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Canada Urges Its Travelers to Stay Home as Trade War With U.S. Continues

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Canada Urges Its Travelers to Stay Home as Trade War With U.S. Continues

In a speech this month, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada, clearly annoyed by import tariffs levied by President Trump and his threats of making Canada “the 51st state,” suggested that Canadians might act individually to respond to the affronts.

“Now is also the time to choose Canada,” Mr. Trudeau said, adding, “It might mean changing your summer vacation plans to stay here in Canada and explore the many national and provincial parks, historical sites and tourist destinations our great country has to offer.”

In the weeks since, it appears that at least some Canadian citizens are taking his directive seriously.

“I’ve decided that I will no longer be traveling to the U.S. unless it’s absolutely necessary to go,” said Harold White, 72, who lives in Quebec.

Mr. White, a lawyer, said he had canceled an annual summer trip to Maine, one that he has made every year for 60 years. Over the decades, he made friends with local residents there, he said, whom he does not expect to see for the next four years. Instead, he and his wife plan to travel to Spain and in later years, make road trips across Canada.

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“It pains me to think that I’m not going to Maine or to Cape Cod or even to New York City for a vacation in the near term,” Mr. White said, noting that he continued to travel to the United States during President Trump’s first term. “But this time around, really, I feel like Canadians have been slapped across the face by Trump.”

According to the U.S. Travel Association, a nonprofit group that represents the U.S. travel industry, Canadians made 20.4 million visits to the United States last year and were responsible for $20.5 billion in spending. A 10 percent decline in Canadian visitors would amount to a $2.1 billion loss, the group said.

“We have seen that people are starting to pivot away and avoid the U.S.,” said Alexis von Hoensbroech, the chief executive of WestJet, the second-largest airline in Canada. “We see also an increase of bookings into Mexico, into the Caribbean, into other non-U.S. destinations.”

Mark Galardo, a vice president for Air Canada, the country’s largest airline, said that it would be adjusting its schedule from March onward in order to “derisk” the situation.

“We are anticipating proactively that there could be a slowdown,” he said in a statement.

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Florida, California, Nevada, New York and Texas are the most visited U.S. states by Canadians. Those states could experience declines in revenue in their retail and hospitality sectors from a Canadian travel boycott, according to U.S. Travel.

However, in a statement, Geoff Freeman, the group’s chief executive, said that the United States received the largest number of international visitors ever in 2018, in the middle of the first Trump Administration, and that what travelers say and what they do are often different.

“If we have a decline in travel from any specific destination, we will share that information where it needs to be shared and work with the administration to solve for that problem,” Mr. Freeman said. “We do want them coming to the United States. If that’s not happening, then we’ve got work to do.”

In a statement, a spokeswoman for Flight Center Travel Group, an international travel agency, said that the company has seen a “softening in cross-border travel bookings” from Canada to the United States — a shift that has been gaining momentum since November. The Canadian dollar is weak compared with the U.S. dollar, the statement said, and that existing reluctance was exacerbated by the announcement on import tariffs. (On Thursday, President Trump insisted that the tariffs would go into effect next week.)

Amra Durakovic, the spokeswoman, said that Canadians’ “desire for travel” remained strong, with many prioritizing other destinations over the United States so that travelers could “make the most of their journeys.”

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“Looking ahead, we remain hopeful that travel and trade between Canada and the U.S. will soon resume with the confidence and ease both countries have long enjoyed,” Ms. Durakovic said in the statement.

In the United States, state tourism boards are bracing for potential effects.

Sara Otte Coleman, the tourism and marketing director for North Dakota’s department of commerce, said that the state, which borders Canada, had paused its paid marketing in Canada until officials could “better understand the sentiment about traveling to North Dakota.”

Tim Chapman is the chief executive of the International Peace Garden, a park that extends across the border between the Canadian province of Manitoba and North Dakota.

He said he has been receiving emails from Canadian visitors who said they no longer planned to visit the tourist attraction, which usually draws around 150,000 visitors a year.

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In one exchange, Mr. Chapman said, a Canadian told him she could not visit because of the rhetoric out of Washington. He said that he explained that the garden was a nonprofit that needed support from visitors and that he felt she understood.

“The Peace Garden has always stood for and advocated for the peace and cooperation of our two countries,” Mr. Chapman said.

“Even though we don’t have a lot of control about what’s being said, we can still be a place where people can come together, because the vast majority of Americans and Canadians do really value that friendship and longstanding cooperation.”

Mr. von Hoensbroech, the WestJet executive, said that he did expect cross-border travel to pick back up at some point. He noted that this was common in the travel industry — short-term reactions to current events that ultimately return to general stability. Still, he said, the response was unique.

“I haven’t seen anything like this,” he said.

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Video: We Analyzed the Deadly Crash at LaGuardia

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Video: We Analyzed the Deadly Crash at LaGuardia

new video loaded: We Analyzed the Deadly Crash at LaGuardia

Our graphics reporter Lazaro Gamio breaks down the second-by-second analysis leading up to the deadly plane crash at LaGuardia Airport.

By Lazaro Gamio, Coleman Lowndes and James Surdam

March 27, 2026

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Video: LaGuardia Crash Survivors Recount Ordeal

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Video: LaGuardia Crash Survivors Recount Ordeal

“I just thought, please don’t let this be how my life ends. I’m not ready to die. When we landed, it was a very rough landing. Like we landed and the plane jolted back up, and that caught a lot of passengers off guard. Everyone kind of like, ‘What’s going on?’ And then you hear the pilot braking, and it was like just this grinding sound.” “Everybody was shocked everywhere. There was — there’s people screaming. The plane just veered off course. I mean, it was just — it all happened so quickly, but it all felt just like a very dire situation.” “Oh, God. Oh my goodness. That’s crazy.” “People were bleeding from their nose, cuts and scrapes. I saw black eyes, all different types of facial contusions, bruising and bleeding. I was sitting by the exit door, and I opened the exit door. There was a sense of camaraderie amongst the survivors. Nobody was pushing, shoving, ‘I got to get out first.’” “The plane actually tipped back as we were leaving, as people were getting off the plane. That was when the nose kind of fell off the front of the plane, and the whole plane kind of went up to what we’d seen in all the pictures of the plane’s nose in the air.” And there was no slide when we got out. A lot of us were jumping off of the airplane wing to get down. And when I got out and I saw that the front of the plane, how destroyed it was, I just was — I was in shock.” “It was only really when I was outside of the plane, looking back at the plane, and I had seen what had happened to the cockpit, and then just like this sense of dread overcame me, where I was just like, wow, a lot of people might have just been pretty badly hurt.” “I’m grateful to the pilots who were so courageous and brave, and acted swiftly, and they saved our lives. And if it wasn’t for them, I wouldn’t be able to come home to my family. I’m forever indebted to them. They’re my heroes.”

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Video: Passenger Jet and Fire Truck Crash at LaGuardia Airport, Leaving 2 Dead

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Video: Passenger Jet and Fire Truck Crash at LaGuardia Airport, Leaving 2 Dead

new video loaded: Passenger Jet and Fire Truck Crash at LaGuardia Airport, Leaving 2 Dead

The two pilots of a Air Canada Express jet were killed after a collision with a Port Authority fire truck on Sunday at LaGuardia Airport in New York.

By Axel Boada and Monika Cvorak

March 23, 2026

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