The Supreme Court struck down Trump’s tariffs, but the US travel slump runs deeper than trade policy. Will the ruling actually change anything?
Friday was a big day in American legal history. The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in Learning Resources Inc. v. Trump that President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariff program, built on the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977, was unconstitutional. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that IEEPA “does not authorize the President to impose tariffs,” noting that no president had ever used the law this way before Trump, and that “extraordinary” executive power requires clear congressional authorization. The ruling strikes down the country-by-country “reciprocal” tariffs, which ranged from 34% on Chinese goods to a 10% baseline for the rest of the world. With $160 billion in tariff revenue collected since the policy began and a potential refund burden the Penn Wharton Budget Model estimates at $175 billion, the economic stakes are genuinely enormous.
This was, in part, the reason many traveler gave for passing on trips to the United States.
The Numbers Tell a Complicated Story
The US had a rough 2025 in terms of inbound tourism, arguably its worst non-pandemic year in recent memory. International arrivals fell 5.4%, with total visits expected to drop from 72.4 million in 2024 to 67.9 million. The World Travel and Tourism Council projected that the US would lose $12.5 billion in international visitor spending, making it the only economy out of 184 analyzed projected to see a tourism revenue decline. Tourism Economics had originally forecast an 8.8% increase in international visitors for 2025 before revising that to a 9.4% decrease after Trump’s tariff announcements. A swing that large is not something you can pin on trade policy alone.
The Trump Administration’s trade deals had a stated effort of resolving the US’ nearly trillion-dollar trade deficit by making it more expensive for foreign entities to to sell goods cheaper than American equivalents. As a result of increased cost for foreign goods, the tactic was meant to encourage US companies to invest locally alongside foreign partners seeking access to the US market which accounts for 25-26% of the entire global economy.
While trade deals and tariffs might have been the lightning rod that gave visitors a reason to skip the US, the general approach of the Trump Administration and disagreements over policy and political position were more likely the true reason.
Canada Is The Case Study Worth Examining
No country illustrates the complexity here better than Canada, historically the single largest source of foreign tourists to the US. Canadians contributed $20.5 billion to the US economy in 2024. What happened in 2025 was, by any measure, a collapse. Vehicle border crossings fell 30% year-over-year for ten consecutive months, air travel from Canada to the US dropped 24%, and leisure carrier Air Transat exited the US market entirely. By the end of 2025, the US had lost roughly $4.5 billion in Canadian tourism spending.
The Canadian boycott started because of tariffs, but it did not stay there. Trump’s repeated suggestions that Canada should become the “51st state” struck a cultural nerve that trade policy alone cannot explain. Stories of Canadians being detained at the US border added fear to indignation. Surveys from Angus Reid found 70% of Canadians were uncomfortable traveling to the US, and nearly two-thirds told YouGov and Flight Centre Canada they were less likely to visit. These were not people waiting for a tariff ruling before booking a flight to Florida.
Denmark Took The Opposite Approach
In late January, VisitDenmark sent an email to approximately 6,000 US-based travel advisors and tour operators to proactively reassure them that Americans are still welcome in Denmark, specifically in response to anxiety around Trump’s Greenland annexation threats. The email had a very high response rate, which tells you how hungry the travel industry was for that clarity. VisitDenmark’s US marketing manager confirmed there had been no reports of bad travel experiences or anti-American sentiment on the ground, noting Danes “see a difference between people and the government.” US travel to Denmark was actually up 8.3% in 2025.
It is a genuinely interesting counterpoint to the Canadian angle. Canada’s boycott of the US is because of how it has been treated. Denmark, whose territory is being threatened with annexation, is going out of its way to reassure American travelers they are still welcome. The contrast between those two responses is fairly striking, and probably worth noting. Increased traffic numbers suggest that it’s working.
What The Ruling Actually Changes, And What It Doesn’t
The SCOTUS decision is meaningful on constitutional grounds, but the administration’s response was immediate. Within hours, Trump signed a new executive order invoking Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974, imposing a 10% global tariff. Section 122 caps the rate at 15%, comes with a 150-day limit, and requires congressional approval for any extension. The administration has also signaled it will use Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962 for broader tariff expansion, which allows tariffs on national security grounds with no upper limit but requires a lengthy Commerce Department investigation. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent still projected “virtually unchanged tariff revenue in 2026.”
Given that courts struck down the IEEPA tariffs at the International Court of Trade, at the Court of Appeals, and then at the Supreme Court, it is a reasonable bet that aggressive new tariff structures under Section 122 or Section 232 will draw immediate legal challenges and strong arguments for injunctions. The legal reasoning that ended the IEEPA tariffs does not disappear just because the administration cites a different statute.
Further, it’s unclear what will happen to the funds collected during the period. If they were illegal to impose, they are would need to be returned but is this to consumers, businesses, and in what manner?
Was US Travel Ever Really Just About Tariffs?
The 2026 FIFA World Cup was supposed to be a generational tourism windfall for the US, but travel bans on Senegal, Ivory Coast, Iran, and Haiti, all World Cup qualifiers, have already clouded the picture. International travelers make decisions based on how they expect to be received, not just what things cost, and the US has been losing ground on that front in a way that a court ruling cannot directly address.
The Supreme Court’s ruling is a landmark decision on executive power and deserves to be recognized as such. But the idea that it will meaningfully reverse the decline in international tourism to the US is likely wishful thinking. Tariffs gave a lot of people a concrete reason to stay away, but the underlying concerns went deeper and accumulated faster than any single policy could explain. With new tariffs already signed and legal battles almost certain to follow, the trade environment is nowhere near settled. The US travel industry, heading into what should have been its best year in a generation, is going to find that rebuilding trust with international visitors requires a lot more than a favorable Supreme Court decision.
What do you think?
Contrary to what people really wish to believe, international travel has not collapsed. Florida saw a 4% increase in overseas arrival and a record year since 2019.
That is absolutely not correct as a country. Florida is not the nation. Travel to the U.S. slid 7% and future bookings are down 4%. We were THE ONLY developed nation in THE WORLD where travel declined as a destination.
Expect that to continue now even more as TSA PRE and Global Entry have been canceled.