A couple of weeks ago, I was in London for the annual meeting of the Business History Conference, a professional group I’ve been involved with for many years. Nothing out of the ordinary: many BHC members live in other countries, and we typically assemble outside the United States every fourth or fifth year.
All went smoothly with this year’s meeting, but next year’s has hit a bump. Instead of returning to the United States, we’ll convene in Mexico City. The reason for that choice is that some foreign historians are uncomfortable traveling to the United States. Reports of U.S. officials denying visas, demanding access to travelers’ electronic devices, and detaining visitors have left many scholars reluctant to come.
This is a small example of how the Trump Administration’s crackdown on visitors it deems undesirable works against another of its goals, reducing the $900 billion U.S. trade deficit.
When foreigners come to the United States, the Census Bureau tallies their expenditures as exports of travel services. Should they fly on a U.S. airline, their airfare counts as a services export as well. But since Donald Trump took office, fewer are choosing to come. In the first three months of this year, the number of foreign passengers arriving at U.S. airports is 2 percent below the same period of 2025 and 7 percent below the figure for 2024. In raw numbers, eight million fewer foreigners reached the United States by air in 2025 than in 2019, the last year before the pandemic, and the total for 2026 looks to be even smaller. This does not include the number of visitors arriving by car from Canada and Mexico, which fell by five million last year and is declining even farther this year.
Foreigners’ preference to avoid the United States is unfortunate for reasons far beyond economics. But the harm to the U.S. economy shouldn’t be ignored. Next March, my historian colleagues and I will be spending our money in Mexican hotels, shops, and restaurants rather than in the United States, and we’ll be fueling the U.S. trade deficit in the process.
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