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One of the peculiarities of being an American is the widespread national conviction that America is the best at everything.
This is particularly true of Republicans and MAGA, self-identified “real Americans” who consider anyone criticizing the US to be a commie traitor.
Trump takes this a step further by declaring anything he touches to be the biggest, best thing ever. He is convinced he has made America great again, and that the whole world now respects and fears the United States accordingly.
This is, of course, complete nonsense.
Since Trump has returned to office, global approval of the United States has plummeted. This is seen as far back as polling data from early 2025, and it’s likely much worse now.
When Pew Research asked people across 36 countries this spring if they trusted various world leaders to do the right thing, Trump was trusted least — less than Putin, Xi Jinping, and Netanyahu. Gallup found that world opinion of the United States has fallen to its lowest point in 20 years.
Ouch.
Many Americans still think that people must be drawn to this glorious shining city on a hill, and that no one who isn’t an aforementioned commie traitor would ever want to leave what is obviously the best country on earth.
Nope.
For the first time in 50 years, the US experienced negative net migration in 2025. The country isn’t letting much of anyone in, and record numbers of people are choosing to be somewhere else if they have the option (including myself and my family).
There are far more who would leave if the opportunity was there. Last year Gallup found that 20 percent of all Americans would move out of the US if they could, and 40 percent of young women would prefer to leave. A Williams Institute study found that 45 percent of transgender people would like to escape elsewhere, and 75 percent of scientists are considering leaving the United States. The situation is similar to how a lot of the people who built the atomic bomb weren’t from the US originally, because a certain guy with a mustache made it clear that their kind weren’t welcome in Germany anymore.
At the same time, polling shows that the percentage of people globally who would want to move to the US as their top choice has plummeted.
Americans are still broadly supportive of Republican “law and order” policies designed to sweep the streets of criminals, homeless people, addicts, and lesbian soccer moms. Many are surprised that foreigners don’t think that this has made America a safer and cleaner place to visit. Surely the presence of ICE, National Guard troops, and police authorized to use lethal force on a whim must make the US as safe and orderly as Singapore or Japan, right?
The actual data shows that the United States is on its way to being as unpopular a tourist destination as Russia, and for roughly the same reasons. In both countries, a tourist who runs afoul of government officials might spend the next six months in a freezing warehouse without legal counsel, eating moldy bologna sandwiches and praying that they won’t die of disease, neglect, or just an old-fashioned beating by the guards.
The US hosted this year’s FIFA World Cup, which happens only once every four years and involves the most popular sport in the world. Attendance at games was high, but it was driven primarily by domestic audiences. International travel to the United States fell far below expectations due to strict travel restrictions, high costs, visa hurdles, and visitors’ fear of dealing with Trump’s private anti-foreigner Sturmabteilung.
Applicants faced $185 visitor visa fees, mandatory in-person interviews, and strict vetting policies that sometimes included social media account reviews. Even with the introduction of the FIFA Pass priority scheduling system, a visa did not guarantee border entry. Nearly 80 percent of hotels in US host cities missed their booking forecasts for June and July, leading to room block cancellations and a broader decline in expected international arrivals.
The United States is the only place where tourism has been dropping. There are expected to be two million fewer visitors in 2026 than in 2025, down 10 million since the high water mark of 70 million in 2018. There was a 2 percent year-over-year drop in June, a 7 percent drop in July, and an 11 percent decrease in August. The numbers suggest that the collapse of the United States’ tourism industry is accelerating, thanks to Trump, MAGA, the GOP’s extreme xenophobia, and their belief that there’s no problem you can’t brutalize your way out of.
By comparison, travel to Canada from overseas countries increased by nearly 4 percent in July 2026, building on a 5.1 percent year-over-year increase recorded in June. And Americans, despite Trump’s insistence that Canada is the nastiest country on earth, are flocking to visit their more civilized northern neighbor. American arrivals to Canada rose by over 9 percent in July compared to July 2025, despite high fuel and hotel prices. Even tourism in China is up by 20 percent, despite the increasingly repressive regime of President Xi.
Less appealing than Berlin 1934
Perhaps the bleakest factoid is that the US is even less popular as a tourist destination than Nazi Germany in the 1930s. Hitler tried to depict Germany as clean, orderly, and safe, despite political repression, destruction of democracy, persecuting queers and Jews, and paramilitary beatings of “undesirables”.
According to the United States Holocaust Museum:
In 1933 alone, American embassies and consulates reported at least 36 individual physical attacks on American citizens in Germany. Uniformed Nazi brownshirts or German mobs beat Americans — tourists, businessmen, and expatriates living in Germany for work or marriage — or effectively kidnapped or arrested them. The attacks were almost all unprovoked or for such “offenses” as failing to salute the German flag, for taking photographs, or for failing to submit to extortion.
The US Consul General in Berlin, George Messersmith, and US Ambassador William E. Dodd aggressively protested these actions directly to Reich ministers and Chancellor Hitler. Because Germany was heavily reliant on foreign trade and tourism, Hitler personally assured Ambassador Dodd in October 1933 that “strong measures” would be taken to protect foreigners and that the police would intervene to prevent future attacks. To avoid violence, many shops in Germany began doing a brisk business selling lapel pins embossed with foreign flags to tourists, letting passersby know they were foreigners exempt from the rule requiring “roman salutes.”
Despite the beatings, campaigns in the United States contributed to a significant rise in international travel, including an alleged doubling of American tourists between 1934 and 1937. Foreign tourism grew steadily through the 1930s (including a major boost during the 1936 Berlin Olympics), convincing many international visitors that the regime was benign or even progressive.
The Nazi regime used the Reichsbahnzentrale für den Deutschen Reiseverkehr (RDV) (German Railroads Information Office) to market Germany globally as a modern, affordable, and cultural destination. By 1938, the RDV operated 31 offices across 26 countries. Promotional materials deliberately portrayed the country as peaceful, safe, and non-aggressive to mask or downplay the regime’s brutality and anti-Semitic policies.
Conversely, ICE’s brutal treatment of tourists and other foreigners traveling on visas (including Germans and Canadians) has elicited no response from the Trump administration. Diplomatic protests are ignored. Unlike the German example of tourists wearing pins to avoid a beating or detention in a concentration camp, wearing foreign flag pins in the US would invite such treatment, at least in some parts of the country.
Trump always wants to be seen as the biggest and best. He lies about everything, including his height and weight. He even strokes his ego by cheating at golf. But we’ll give him credit: only he could make his own country look like a less attractive place to visit than Nazi Germany.
That’s it for now
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I wouldn't want to visit here either. My kids are planning to leave, as have many of their friends. I live in a city that is reliant upon tourism. The games were a disappointment. If not for the locals, they would have been a disaster. The city made significant investments that may not be recouped. I don't know if the comparison with Germany is direct, but there are similarities.
Given the mass deportations (I don't know the numbers) I'm not surprised that the US suffered population decline. Also given that Canadians were the biggest source of visitors I'm not surprised Trump has done terrible things to US tourism. (Harming large numbers of decent low paid people in this industry but Trump only cares about billionaires). But his article showed that the damage is deeper and structural.
Money and a severely disabled adult son for whom I care has stopped this Australian from travelling. (It's a great place but also rather expensive to travel out from anyway). But in truth I wouldn't want to travel to Trump's USA anyway and there's quite a few countries I'd like to see. And not that long ago the US was on my very fanciful list of countries I'd like to see.