Planning a trip to Trump’s America? I need to change your mind

Yep, it’s almost the post-Easter-post-Anzac Day spiral of doom. It’s months and months before we get another real break and, to cheer ourselves up, we start to plan the next one. But I’m getting in early to issue a dramatic travel warning.

If you were thinking about a holiday in the US, you need to rethink. Urgently. I do not care if you’ve promised your kids a visit to Disneyland. The US is not a safe place to visit. That’s particularly true if you are off-white or off-straight – but at least that’s been well signposted by the current deranged administration. God help you if you are trans and have a passport which reflects that.

You will have heard stories about those who’ve been turned away at the border since Trump was elected.Credit: Dionne Gain

But there are many other reasons to be afraid. Pay even the slightest attention to travel tales and you will have heard stories about those who’ve been turned away at the border since Trump was elected. Those who’ve been detained for days on end. Those who have had their phones stolen by US border security. Those who are forced to turn over their passwords to their laptops or, worse, to their social media accounts.

Some hideous examples: the Traveller reader who was detained by US border control at JFK for “enhanced vetting”. He was held for eight hours while border control examined his laptop and iPhone. What happened next? He was forcibly returned to Australia and missed a $15,000 cruise. No evidence of wrongdoing. Or the bloke who was returning to the US after coming back to Australia to scatter his sister’s ashes. He’d been living in the US on a perfectly good visa and was then refused entry. His partner, his job and his home are all still in the US. And it isn’t just happening to Australians.

I hate airports, immigration queues and narky border security folks at the best of times, but I just don’t think I could control myself if one of them asked me what I thought about Donald Trump, which is apparently an occasional thing now. My normal advice to everyone is this: don’t ask a question if you don’t want an honest answer. How I feel about the lunacy of the Trump presidency is not relevant. It doesn’t make me or anyone else a terrorist if we disrespect the US president. It makes me a member of a democracy allowed to speak my mind – as opposed to what’s happening in America right now.

Despite this level of chaos – despite tourist numbers to the US tanking, I’ve been refreshing DFAT’s travel advisory website, smartraveller, on repeat. The US has roughly the same travel warnings as Canada, a country run by reasonably normal people behaving in predictable ways. As in, the direct opposite of the charlatan from Mar-a-Lago.

The overall warning level? “Exercise normal safety precautions.” That’s level one.

Is DFAT bonkers? Sure, it can post and tweet “entry requirements to the US are strict. US authorities have broad powers to decide if you’re eligible to enter. Check US entry, transit and exit requirements whether you’re travelling on a visa or under the Visa Waiver Program … Officials may ask to inspect your electronic devices, emails, text messages or social media accounts. If you refuse, they can deny your entry.”

But consider the level-four warnings it issues about North Korea or Russia, other homes to authoritarian oligarchs. Yep. Smartraveller is all over them: “Do Not Travel.” Obviously. Look, I’d even settle for “reconsider your need to travel”. Or maybe “exercise a high degree of caution”. But the situation genuinely requires a travel warning that will let Australians know this: that way madness – or detention – lies.

The number of Australian visitors to the US in March 2025 was down by 7 per cent compared with March 2024.Credit: Bloomberg

If you don’t want to be the first among your friends to just say no, let me point you to some role models. Our international friends are also changing their travel plans. The Financial Times just published a graph that revealed the year-on-year change in visitors to the US by country of origin. It shows a drop of more than 20 per cent from some countries – and more than 30 per cent from Greenland.

Those folks are probably terrified they will end up in a hostage swap for their homeland. And Canadians are also resisting so hard that Californian Governor Gavin Newsom is now pleading on video: “Sure, you-know-who is trying to stir things up back in DC, but don’t let that ruin your beach plans.”

I wanted to know what was happening here. Had the travel sector noticed anything?

In a lamentably dull response from James Kavanagh, Flight Centre Travel Group chief executive leisure, he said (via his PR team and email) that the US has always been a “firm favourite” for Australians. Der.

Credit: Matt Golding

“With that being said, we must acknowledge the political environment in the US and the fact that it may influence Australians’ decisions on where they choose to travel. For example, looking at the first quarter of 2024 compared to Q1 2025, while we’ve seen a slight decline in bookings to the USA, we’ve seen a significant uplift in bookings to East Asia and Northern Europe.”

Yeah, the Australian Bureau of Statistics noticed a difference and so did the US International Trade Administration. The number of visitors to the US from Australia in March 2025 was down by 7 per cent compared with March 2024.

Kavanagh also put in a plug for cheaper airfares between the US and Australia. Sigh. I hope he and his team are also recommending travel insurance that deals honestly with stressful events like these.

Still not convinced you should avoid Anaheim? Wait! There’s more. A giant outbreak of measles, a giant outbreak of whooping cough. An arson attack on the home of Jewish Democrat governor of Pennsylvania Josh Shapiro.

Our dollar is like a kid on a trampoline against the greenback, so it’s not as if you will actually be able to plan for a big splurge. And then there are the guns, so many guns.

Want some options? Ignore Flight Centre’s specials on flights to Los Angeles. Japan is bloody glorious all year round. Political craziness is at absolutely minimum there and the kindness and charm of the locals at a maximum. That includes folks who work in border security. Plus! You can still visit Disneyland.

Jenna Price is a regular columnist for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.

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