'Catastrophic': Canadian bookings for U.S. travel drop sharply | Hacker News Reader

'Catastrophic': Canadian bookings for U.S. travel drop sharply

ctvnews.ca

67 pointsmgh257 comments

[dupe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43485649

Trade dispute? Well that is one way to call it. The threats of annexation (to us, Greenland, Panama…) general disrespect, news of people being held at the border for days and then deported, all with ongoing support for the party doing this that ran on this platform is something is else.

Is it really?

This seems a pretty obvious outcome of foreign allies constantly negging us for supporting their defense and international organizations taking advantage of the US while citizens are undermined at home.

Progressive managerialism failed to regulate its excesses — and this is what it looks like when that machinery breaks.

The US dictated the rules of the modern world and have seemingly been happy with them for the last 80 years.

Everyone is fine if you want a change, go back to your own country, stop trying to be World Police and focus on domestic issues for a few years. What we aren't happy about is the constant threats of invasion and subjugation.

> The US dictated the rules of the modern world and have seemingly been happy with them for the last 80 years.

The US isn’t a homogeneous entity: for at least 40 years (since the 1980s) there’s been a sharp divide between the general populace and the elites. Unfortunately, this wasn’t corrected until it became overwhelming resentment. You can look at the Seattle WTO riots for an example.

> Everyone is fine if you want a change, go back to your own country, stop trying to be World Police and focus on domestic issues for a few years.

NATO et al have repeatedly complained about just that.

> What we aren't happy about is the constant threats of invasion and subjugation.

Neither were Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, etc. What’s shocking to Canada and EU is not that the US has changed, but realizing where they stand in the world outside of a US supported alliance.

The US is merely applying its policy from the past 80 years within its North American sphere of influence (ie, Canada, Greenland, Panama).

How many countries has the U.S. annexed in the last 80 years?

You’re completely wrong.

But even if you were right that the U.S. was simply applying its foreign policy to its “sphere of influence”, surely even you can see the immense foolishness of applying the same policies you have towards countries that are your enemies or even neutral to you, to countries that are your allies?

Finally, even if we accept that it’s actually really smart to treat your allies as your enemies, in all those other cases the U.S. responded because of attacks by those countries on America, American Allies or American companies. In the current situation there’s no such excuse.

The US is occupying two for profit right now:

- occupying Syrian oil fields

- strong arming Ukraine for mineral rights, after overthrowing a democratically elected government a decade ago

> applying the same policies you have towards countries that are your enemies or even neutral to you, to countries that are your allies?

My exact point is that after publicly shaming Americans (eg, mocking our lack of social spending while being deadbeats to NATO) and collaborating with their perceived enemies (eg, the US internationalist elites) for my entire lifetime, there’s a significant fraction of the US who sees the EU and Canada as adversarial.

If they were allies, why have they spent generations mocking us for our contributions and working against our interests?

> in all those other cases the U.S. responded because of attacks by those countries on America

Syria, Libya, and Ukraine are counter examples.

> In the current situation there’s no such excuse.

Annexing Canada is the US equivalent of Russia retaining control of Ukraine or China slowly invading the ASEAN sea.

That’s what the world looks like in an era of great powers engaging in realpolitik.

> Annexing Canada is the US equivalent of Russia retaining control of Ukraine

Yes, if you disregard a few hundreds of years of history. The reverse, Canada absorbing the US and restoring the continuation of the British Empire, would be more similar, although not equivalent by a long shot.

So “mocking” a country is now casus belli?

If it's a severe mocking it can begin to demoralize a people and make them Canadian.

>My exact point is that after publicly shaming Americans (eg, mocking our lack of social spending while being deadbeats to NATO) and collaborating with their perceived enemies (eg, the US internationalist elites) for my entire lifetime, there’s a significant fraction of the US who sees the EU and Canada as adversarial.

We're watching history be reconstructed into pretext in real time. Soon, we will always have been at war with Canada.

> The US isn’t a homogeneous entity: for at least 40 years (since the 1980s) there’s been a sharp divide between the general populace and the elites. Unfortunately, this wasn’t corrected until it became overwhelming resentment.

You… wait. You think the “elites” aren’t in control anymore and that the “general populace” have their guy in power?

The corrupt millionaire backed by the richest man in the world and half of Silicon Valley?

Can you help me understand what an “elite” is, exactly?

Different definitions of "in control".

Obviously the current administration is not composed of, or working in the interest of, the general populace.

However, the general populace put him there, over the objections of the people the general populace think of as elites.

The top 10% of Americans by income or education level both overwhelmingly voted Democrat in 2024. These are the "elites" that are no longer "in control".

So no, the "elites" are not in control, if you use the definition of "elites" that would be used by the median supporter of the current administration.

nothing is fine. Everyone gets nukes and that means in the short term all warrior cultures will be radioactive dust. Incompetent retro rulers might not get it, but the "retun to empire" is the final act for a ton of warmongers.

I recommend visiting all the places that cause turmoil and make lots of photos. Mekka, Moscow, Istanbul, Bejing, Jerusalem, Teheran, etc. they might be gone soon, taken out by neighbors that had enough of land empires. You cant go full pasttard ala ISIL and expect life to continue in the modern world .So lets go see the sights!

Delenda Moscovia !

nobody is negging the us for supporting their defence.

Nuclear proliferation is the way to go, hopefully Ukraine, Germany, Poland, Romania, Finland, Sweden, South Korea and Japan will be the first in this new age.

Denmark should consider it too asap.

Negging you? That was the US policy. Disarm your allies while promising to protect them.

Canada could've had nuclear weapons. You convinced them to not have it. Same with Ukraine and many more countries. Their fault was trusting the US to not become belligerent.

> A 10 per cent drop in Canada-U.S. travel would risk 14,000 American job losses and US$2.1 billion in lost spending, the association estimates.

So it's a large-ish visible economic impact but probably distributed over the surface so not felt as an apex problem in ways which will strongly inform the US side of things.

If enough of it converts to domestic tourism there will be improvements in consumer spending also fairly widely distributed but the Canadian government may be more motivated to quantify this.

It wouldn't be that widely distributed the majority will be in Florida and Arizona if the snowbirds look elsewhere. Border cities used to cross border shopping trips will also be impacted. I would be surprised if the drop is that low too, just about every Canadian I know is avoiding travel south unless it's already been paid for.

The article quantifies the cost at 10% but the actual decline in flight is 70% so it's "do the maths" I doubt 70% will sustain but its certainly billions.

I wonder if there is a discrepency between the numbers for "travel" and "flights". The US and Canada share a large land border. I would imagine that people who cross at a land border would be more stable in their patterns. Land travelers are much more restricted in where they can go, and more likely to have regular destinations they make habits out of.

Land crossings in Feb 2025 were down 500,000 on Fed ‘24

https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/decline-travellers-driv...

If I’m the government of Mexico, I am taking this opportunity to go on a huge media blitz in Canada. Their tagline could be “Skip the US, literally”.

That's what I was thinking too - this is a huge opportunity to all non-US holiday spots in North America.

What's quite funny about all this, is that the damage Trump has already done, will not disappear quickly. He insulted pretty much every ally country on earth and the disrespect he and his administration show is mind blowing. It's only been 2 months and there are already millions of people in the West who stop buying American and will not go there.

US is about to find out why their stock market was recently valued more as a % of the whole world economy, and not only the US economy.

Not to mention it's now very obvious to anyone outside the US that the US conservative movement has no bottom. There isn't anything that they could be told to do that they would think is beyond the pale.

Nothing, nothing at all. They will do anything.

*insulted every ally except for Israel

"The Flyover States of America"

Wouldn't put it past Trump to try and sign an EO to prevent use of American airspace for direct flights to Mexico or some bullshit like that.

The retaliation in overflights transpolar would hit US airlines severely

Yeah Mexico and the Carribbean should seize this opportunity to go after Florida's tourism industry.

Same happens for Europeans; they do not want to travel to the US. Even some embassies call for caution, like Germany and the UK due to border/visa issues that happened.

I cancelled a business trip to the US and did virtual meeting instead. No way I'm going to a country that detains people on the border for no reason.

Would not want to travel to the US right now if I weren't already from here

Yeah even if you remove politics from the equation (which is impossible to actually do of course), I wouldn't travel to the US as an outsider just for the practical realities of the personal hardship it might cause, especially if you ever said a single negative thing about the current administration or Israel on social media or you happen to be brown and have tattoos.

(For context I am a US citizen living in the US, and terribly embarrassed to admit this because holy shit we've really dropped the ball)

What’s the comparison?

Based on the news I've seen I'm not sure being from there is a good reason to travel there either.

US citizens may not want to travel internationally because they don't trust US customs and border agents upon their return.

About 20 years ago a customs agent asked me, "are you thanking the lord Jesus Christ that you have returned safely to America". You just tell them what they wanted to hear and you were fine. Now if I am not mistaken, they can demand you unlock your phone which might show you were at a Tesla Takedown rally, or purchased a movie ticket to No Other Land, or whatever else is deemed verboten. I am unclear how long a citizen can be detained/delayed by a customs agent without cause.

Reminds me of this guy who had TTP revoked next day after he posted how US is becoming similar to PRC: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DHwEjGazRKx

I thought why do you care, this is just a fast lane but your comment was enlightening... (I am sure based on other recent cases they would totally revoke his visa if he was not a citizen already)

Being from there only means they can't deport you or deny entry indefinitely, right?

The thing is, you sound hopeful, which I think you should find worrying by itself.

To be explicit: You feel the chilling effect.

Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chilling_effect) says:

> [...] a chilling effect is the inhibition or discouragement of the legitimate exercise of natural and legal rights by the threat of legal sanction. A chilling effect may be caused by legal actions such as the passing of a law, the decision of a court, or the threat of a lawsuit; any legal action that would cause people to hesitate to exercise a legitimate right (freedom of speech or otherwise) for fear of legal repercussions.

In other words:

A chilling effect is when people are scared to use their rights because they fear legal trouble. This can happen because of new laws, court rulings, or threats of lawsuits. It makes people hesitate to do something they’re normally allowed to do.

You are wondering whether to go abroad. BOOM.

Multiple senior leaders in Trump’s White House, including old school republicans like Rubio have floated deporting American citizens to El Salvador. I would not want to be the person at the center of those court cases

Especially if you’re already shaved and rotting in that prison in defiance of an injunction.

I ain't leaving California any time soon either.

Stay at home. Don't by us. This is what me as a german will do.

I can't ditch goog or WhatsApp. The other apps I do not use. So, alternatives are less, but Europe will regulate it soon with TERIFFS tariffs so fearsome that you can't call them tariffs anymore, but rather terror-ifs. Tariffs on digital goods. Thank you Europe.

I’m not dismissing the trade issue but I’d like to point out that the currency exchange rate is really bad right now, I’m not sure many Canadians can afford to travel these days. Our economy is not doing so hot with raising rents and grocery prices, people are struggling. I think there are multiple factors at play here but Trump’s rhetoric is certainly not helping.

The wider context seems missing: Rapid ramping down of fossil fuel based air travel is needed to mitigate the climate disaster.

If we've got data, let's go with the data.

Aviation accounts for about 2.5% of global CO² emissions.

https://ourworldindata.org/global-aviation-emissions

Rapidly ramping down fossil fuel based air travel will have approximately no effect on climate.

From your link: "Although CO2 gets most of the attention, it accounts for less than half of this warming. Two-thirds come from non-CO2 forcings." So it's much over 5%.

All of transport sector emissions makes up 20%. The other subsectors are decarbonising, but there's no tech solution in sight for air travel in the needed timeframe. And air travel is growing alarmingly quickly (doubled between 2006 and 2019).

All the individual slices of the pie we can tackle are pretty small, aviation is one of the bigger ones. We can't keep subdividing and then concluding for each one that it's too small to matter.

Also from my link:

In 1990, one passenger-kilometer would emit 357 grams of CO2. By 2019, this had more than halved to 157 grams.

That's true, but of course this is a much slower rate of improvement (30 years to 2x) than the growth of air travel, and has slowed in recent years[1] since seat density and seatu utilization can't be increased much more without radical approaches like sedating people and stacking them like cargo.

[1] https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/aerospace-and-defense/ou...

My single vote will have approximately no effect on the outcome.

That doesn't stop me from voting.

Since don't spent a dime on transport & other things don't need to be transported the reduction is a bit higher.

While the percentage shows that aviation is not a *priority* for climate change, the required reductions in CO2 emissions for the climate to stabilise are around 99.9%, so aviation-induced emissions will have to come down at some point.

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