ANALYSIS: Under tariffs, the boycott cracks on the road, planes win back only 3,581 returns

567,047 return flights

July, a first gain

Statistics Canada released a number on September 22, 2026, that the industry had been awaiting for almost three years. In July, Canadians’ return trips by air from the United States rose 0.6%.

It is the first increase since August 2023. It ends a streak of 34 months of declines.

The exact count: 567,047 return trips by air. One by one. One suitcase per carousel.

You hear the baggage carousel creak back to life. You spot your bag by the ribbon tied to the handle. You head home.

Out of 108,743 lost

Now this number has to be set beside the two other Julys. Statistics Canada gives them in the same table.

July 2024: 672,209 return trips by air. July 2025: 563,466. July 2026: 567,047.

3,581 trips regained out of 108,743 lost.

Three percent.

That is what the first gain in 34 months gives back, out of what air travel lost in one year.

Up 0.6%, after thirty-four months down.

Thirty-four months down

Since August 2023

The streak starts before the tariffs. August 2023 is the last increase before it, according to Statistics Canada.

Then comes 2025. Canadians’ trips south collapse. Return crossings from the United States fall 25.4% over the year, the agency writes in a review published on July 22.

The low point comes in July 2025. Nearly a third fewer than a year earlier.

In 2024, Canadians made 39 million return crossings from the United States. Three-quarters of all their returns from abroad. By the end of 2025, it was only two-thirds.

Since 1972, a drop of more than 30% had been seen only once, the agency notes. In September 2001.

September 2001. July 2025. Two shocks. Only one caused by an ally’s policy.

April, May, June

Then the slope eases. TheTravel pulled the agency’s monthly figures for air travel.

Down 7.1% in April. Down 3.2% in May. Down 1.2% in June. Up 0.6% in July.

Each month lost less than the one before. July crossed the line. Barely.

And yet these percentages are measured against 2025, a year that had already collapsed, TheTravel warns.

Losing less is not winning back.

The road comes before the plane

2,168,046 return trips by car

July’s real movement is not in the sky. It is on the highway.

Return trips by car from the United States rose 12.6% in a year. They reached 2,168,046, according to the Statistics Canada table.

In all, Canadians came back from 2.8 million trips south in July. That is 10.1% more than in July 2025.

It is the fourth straight monthly increase. After fifteen months of declines.

And it is still 25.6% below July 2024.

Six in ten, same day

Among those car trips, 59.8% are same-day round trips.

A tank of gas. The parcel at the post office on the other side. The quick visit. You hand your passport through the window, engine running, and you head back.

The car had lost the most. July 2024 counted 3,001,539 return trips by car. July 2025, 1,925,929.

It is also regaining the fastest: 242,117 more return trips in a year. Nearly a quarter of what had vanished.

This analysis says something the July headline hides. The boycott does not give way first on the vacation flight. It gives way on the short drive, the one you can decide that same morning.

That same morning. On a whim.

Statistics Canada had noted it for 2025: a car trip is easier to change than a plane trip.

The boycott gives way first on the shortest trip.

A new bridge in Windsor

July 27

Part of this return has an address. Windsor.

The Gordie Howe International Bridge opened on July 27, 2026, between Windsor and Detroit. From July 27 to 31, 23,500 Canadian residents used it to come home, according to Statistics Canada.

The Financial Post links part of the rise in car returns to this new route.

In August, its first full month, the bridge carried 134,900 return trips by Canadians in cars. Of those, 56.7% were same-day.

Down 35.4% on the Ambassador

Over the same period, the Ambassador Bridge and the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel saw 348,000 Canadian and American residents cross by car. That is 35.4% fewer than in August 2025, according to the agency.

A new crossing. An old one emptying out.

The bridge itself had to wait. It was supposed to open in early June, the Financial Post recalls. A dispute between Washington and Ottawa over compensation delayed it. According to sources cited by Bloomberg, U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick reportedly stepped in to push back the opening.

And yet the trucks keep rolling. In August, 34,800 trucks entered Canada over the new bridge. At Windsor’s two other crossings, 87,400, up 0.4%.

So part of the traffic did not come back to life. It switched lanes.

How big a part? The overall number does not say. It only says that a new bridge skews the reading of a single month.

A new bridge moves the numbers too.

August, under the tariffs

Up 8.8%

The July number predates the latest escalation, the National Post points out. The August one does not.

On September 11, Statistics Canada released its leading indicator for August. Return trips from the United States reached 2.6 million, up 8.8%. A fifth straight monthly increase.

In August, return trips by car rose 9.9% year over year. They remain 27.4% below August 2024.

In August, return trips by air rose 3.6%. They remain 22.7% below August 2024.

In August, the figures are still preliminary. The full count comes out on October 22.

August 22, September 8

During that month, Washington hardened its stance. On August 22, 50% duties hit certain Canadian products, The Boston Globe reports. The National Post puts the targeted goods at $28 billion.

On August 27, Donald Trump signed an order renaming Lake Ontario “Lake America,” the National Post recalls. Ottawa struck back with counter-tariffs on September 8, according to The Boston Globe.

On Monday, August 3, the Civic Holiday, 176,900 Canadian residents came home from abroad in a single day, according to the agency. The record for the month.

The trade war gets worse. Return trips rise anyway.

That is the paradox of the month. There is nothing cheerful about it.

Washington hardens. The road keeps rolling.

“New York Loves Canada”

Down 26% in 2025

On August 21, New York Governor Kathy Hochul launched a promotion called “New York Loves Canada.”

Discounts on attractions and lodging, through December 2026. The program highlights savings to offset the exchange rate, according to the state tourism office.

The reason is in the same release. Canadian trips to New York State fell 26% in 2025. Their spending fell 28% from 2024.

Canada is the state’s top international market. Especially for the border regions: Niagara Falls, the Thousand Islands, the Adirondacks.

Las Vegas had gone further: its At Par program treated the Canadian dollar like an American dollar, according to The Boston Globe.

September 29, just after midnight

New York says it loves us. Washington bans.

On Tuesday at 12:01 a.m., the United States will ban imports of certain Canadian spirits, dairy products, molasses and motorcycles, CBC reports.

An invitation from Albany. A ban from Washington. The same traveller gets both.

Which of the two messages weighs more at the moment of booking?

Albany courts. Washington bans.

Jay Peak counted its skiers

Down 20% to 25%

On the other side, the bill has names. The Boston Globe published one on September 13.

Jay Peak, a Vermont ski resort near the border. Its general manager, Steve Wright, puts the drop in Canadian customers at 20% to 25% last winter. From memory, he notes.

American skiers rose about 40%. The season was a record, thanks to 450 inches of snow.

Last month, he posted a message to Canadians. “The border may feel different right now. We do not,” he wrote. You are our neighbours, our friends, he added.

Burlington, down 48%

A University of Toronto study based on cellphone data measures a median drop of about 42% in Canadian visits to American cities, according to The Boston Globe.

Boston is down 52%. Burlington, 48%.

The snow made Jay Peak’s season. Snow does not fall on command.

Neither do neighbours.

The chairlift cold under your mittens, the clack of the safety bar coming down. Those moments lost an accent last winter.

Replacing a customer does not replace a neighbour.

$3.3 billion that stayed home

Down 25.4% in 2025

The 2025 boycott has a price, and Statistics Canada has calculated it.

Canadians’ spending in the United States fell by $3.3 billion in 2025, to $18.8 billion, according to the July 22 review.

Those are cancelled vacations. Those are empty hotel rooms. Those are meals eaten elsewhere.

Leisure spending down south fell by $2.2 billion, to $12.1 billion. Leisure carries most of the decline.

$81.3 billion at home

That money stayed somewhere. Domestic travel rose by 5.0 million visits in 2025. Spending at home climbed 8.7%, to $81.3 billion.

Overseas travel gained 1.3 million visits. Europe, up 13.6%. Asia, up 16.7%.

The American drop was almost entirely offset by domestic and overseas travel, the agency concludes.

That is the part of the gesture that worked. It has been measured.

The money did not vanish. It changed routes.

450,000 fewer seats

An already low base

Now I have to write what unsettles this reading.

July’s 0.6% gain may not be a return of confidence. It could be nothing more than a comparison with a summer of 2025 that had collapsed. TheTravel says so bluntly.

There is also supply. According to the firm OAG, cited by TheTravel, carriers cut about 10% of their seats between Canada and the United States in the first quarter of 2026. About 450,000 fewer seats.

WestJet, down 19%. Air Canada, down 7%. Flair, down 58%.

Every seat removed is a return trip that cannot happen. Anger or no anger.

The loonie

Finally, there is the exchange rate. The Boston Globe cites it as a factor in its own right, alongside politics.

An Edmonton marketing professional sums it up for the paper: the equation no longer feels the way it used to.

So the boycott does not explain the whole gap. Not all of it. A share. The loonie, the seats pulled and the 2025 base explain another.

That cuts both ways. What comes back is not necessarily forgiveness.

Fewer seats, fewer return trips, even without anger.

Family doesn’t boycott

Down 9%, against down 21.5%

Here is the number that best explains what is giving way.

There is leisure travel. In 2025, it fell 21.5% to the United States, or 3.2 million fewer visits, according to Statistics Canada.

There are visits to family and friends. They fell only 9%, or 536,000 visits.

There is the money. Abroad, leisure travellers spent 4.5 times more than those visiting family, the agency calculates.

So there are two boycotts. The vacation one, which is holding. The family one, which never took hold nearly as much.

The sister settled on the other side. The grandson born down there. The birthday you do not miss over a tariff. Nobody asks a grandfather to choose between his daughter and his country.

The snowbirds’ houses

Some chose the other direction. Angry snowbirds are putting their houses up for sale, The Boston Globe writes.

The key you hand back. The air conditioner you unplug one last time.

I have no lesson to give those who head back toward family. I do not know what I would do.

A civic gesture that asks you to miss a birth is no longer a gesture. It is a sacrifice.

You boycott a beach, not a birthday.

July 9 to 14

49% plan to go

The Longwoods International poll was conducted from July 9 to 14, among 1,000 Canadian adults.

28% say they visited the United States in the past six months. A year earlier, it was 23%.

49% plan to go in the next twelve months. In April, it was 43%.

51% have not gone and have no intention of going. Against 60% in July 2025.

56%, against 63%

More than half, 56%, still say Washington’s policies, trade practices and statements make them less inclined to go. A year earlier: 63%.

Only 37% consider the country safe to visit. And yet 91% see plenty to see and do there.

The thaw is slow, Longwoods president Amir Eylon admits.

Slow. Real. Fragile.

And yet this poll predates August 22. Before the lake. Before the bans. And after…

The communications director of Vermont’s Agency of Commerce, Hazel Brewster, already judged the gains modest next to the 2025 collapse, according to The Boston Globe. She fears they will be short-lived.

July polled a lull. August restarted the tariffs.

Americans come, we hesitate

A sixth month of increases

While we hesitate, they cross.

In July, U.S. residents made 3.5 million trips to Canada. That is 9.1% more than in July 2025. A sixth straight monthly increase, according to Statistics Canada.

In August, their trips rose again, by 2.4%. A seventh month in a row.

They fly too: 832,100 arrivals by air in July, up 5.3%.

They come by car: 2.1 million arrivals, up 7.5%. They come by cruise ship: 367,800, up 28.8%.

Overseas, first drop since 2019

The other surprise comes from our own long-haul departures.

In July, Canadians returned from 1.0 million overseas trips. That is 1.0% fewer than a year earlier. Setting the pandemic aside, it is the first drop since July 2019.

In August, the decline reached 2.8%. A third month of declines.

The 2025 diversification is running out of steam. Europe and Asia would no longer be replacing the south as much.

Where will we go next summer, if the elsewhere is shrinking too?

They come more. We go less far.

Three thousand returns are not forgiveness

October 13 and 22

The next count has two dates. On October 13, the leading indicator for September. On October 22, the full review for August.

September will be the first full month under the August 22 duties. It will show whether the road keeps giving way.

The July number stays what it is. Planes regaining 3,581 return trips. A road regaining 242,117. A border still a quarter below 2024.

What we are holding

If the boycott is wearing thin, what civic gesture will last as long as Washington’s tariffs?

The 2025 gesture moved $3.3 billion. It cost families. It is wearing thin on the shortest road.

It sent Albany chasing our wallets. It did not make Washington fold.

The suitcases come back onto the carousel, one by one. Not yet the hundred thousand others.

The road gave way. The planes still count a hundred thousand missing.

Sources:

Primary Sources:

• Statistics Canada — travel between Canada and other countries, July 2026, September 22, 2026
• Statistics Canada — leading indicator of international arrivals, August 2026, September 11, 2026
• Statistics Canada — Canadians’ travel to the United States, a year in review, July 22, 2026

Secondary Sources:

• TheTravel — Canadians fly back to the U.S. after 34 months, September 25, 2026
• National Post (Yahoo) — the air rebound before the latest escalation, September 23, 2026
• The Boston Globe — Canadian tourists and New England, September 13, 2026