I’ve changed my mind about travelling to Trump’s America

Modern-day travellers are spoiled for choice. You could discover this country’s many attractions. For a little more money, you could go to a Pacific island or South-East Asia. You could spend more and go to Japan or South Korea or splash out further and go to Europe or even South America.

Why, you have to ask yourself, would you go to the US?

Visitors pose with a man in a Trump mask outside the White House. The US remains one of the best travel destinations in the world, regardless of who’s in charge.Credit: AP

Let’s step back and look at the world as it is right now. Many travellers – I would say the vast majority – crave stability and predictability.

That’s part of why somewhere like Japan is so popular, because you know exactly what you’re going to get in Japan: trains will arrive on time, restaurants will serve amazing food, people will be polite and friendly, toilets will be clean, and you will have an enjoyable, incident-free holiday.

Perhaps that sounds boring to a certain style of traveller, but to many of the people spending their hard-earned money on one holiday a year, or every two years, stability is crucial.

Consider the US. Few could argue that it’s a stable destination right now. The leadership of Donald Trump is freewheeling and chaotic, with tariffs on and then tariffs off, feuds with Canada and Europe and Ukraine (on and off), beef with Australia over trade, plans for widespread travel bans, rising prices for goods and services, and those old underlying issues of gun crime and civil unrest.

Most US citizens did not vote for Donald Trump.Credit: AP

My opinion, up until a few weeks ago, was: why would you bother? There are so many great places in the world to go; why mess with the US for the next four years?

Many people may agree – from the most recent available Australian Bureau of Statistics figures, the US is one of only two countries (with the UK) in Australia’s top 10 most visited destinations yet to bounce back to pre-COVID figures.

The Washington Post reports that international travel as a whole to the US is expected to slide 5 per cent this year as tourists from many parts of the world shun the nation.

But then I had a conversation with a travel-loving friend that changed my mind.

Who’s going to suffer, this friend asked me, if everyone stops holidaying in the US? The country’s economy will suffer, so maybe Donald Trump will too. Maybe your protest, or at least your position, will be heard. Maybe. Though he’s not running for re-election.

But you know who will most definitely suffer? Americans. Americans who voted for Trump, sure. But also the vast majority of citizens who did not vote for Donald Trump. That’s 270 million people. (Even if you look solely at the Americans who are enrolled to vote and who did so in 2024, most did not want Trump as their president – he won with only 49.8 per cent of the overall vote.)

You’re harming businesses run by minorities who are having their lives made actively more difficult under anti-DEI legislation. African-Americans, Hispanics, Asian-Americans, members of the LGBTQI+ community – they run businesses, they have jobs, and a huge slump in inbound tourism will undoubtedly affect a lot of those.

The diner in Atlanta, the shoe shop in LA, the B&B in Boulder, the restaurant in Seattle – these are the collateral damage of any soft boycott of the United States.

People who don’t run businesses or who don’t rely on tourism miss out, too, when tourists disappear. They miss the cultural exchange tourism brings. They miss the face-to-face interactions with the rest of the world, the reassurance that we know they’re not all “those people”.

I have no good argument against this. It’s all true. I’ve never been a fan of travel boycotts, because I think they harm the wrong people, and even a soft boycott of the US – maybe not a full-on protest, but just deciding to go somewhere else because it seems like a better idea – affects people who don’t necessarily deserve it.

The decision as a traveller to not go somewhere is deeply complex – rational, emotional and financial. You don’t want to reward the land of Trump with your tourism dollars; you don’t want to visit a place that appears teetered on the brink of societal disruption; you flat-out can’t afford to visit a country that is 20 per cent more expensive today than it was in 2021 purely due to the exchange rate.

And there are so many other places to go.

But the US has long been a favourite destination for Australian travellers, and it should still be. If you loved it then, you should love it now. I hope to visit the country this year, even if I find the actions of its leaders abhorrent – because there are a lot of other countries that fit that description, sometimes even Australia, and I haven’t turned my back on those.

If anything, it’s more important than ever to visit. Even with so many other choices.