Donald Trump regularly flies into fits of rage over Canada that seem pretty unbalanced given the positive view that most Americans have of our northern ally—an obsession that even recently led him to threaten to block a bridge project linking Windsor, Ontario, to Detroit. The scuttling of this cross-border transport link would damage Michigan’s economy, so the threat became a problem for the state’s Republican congressional candidates, potentially further undermining the GOP’s chances of holding the House.
Now there’s been another absurd turn in this saga. The Detroit News has a striking new piece reporting that Trump’s aggression toward Canada is hurting the Michigan economy in another way: by slashing the flow of Canadians who cross into neighboring border states like Michigan, where they spend lots of money.
The numbers are significant. Around 10 million fewer Canadians traveled to the United States in 2025 relative to the previous year, the story notes, adding that this is hitting Michigan and other nearby states “especially hard.” The impact on the Wolverine State is particularly acute:
Canadian visits to southeast Michigan fell 30% from 2024 to 2025, said Visit Detroit CEO Claude Molinari.
“That’s a large decline in a short amount of time,” Molinari said. “And it’s certainly having a detrimental impact on our area hotels, restaurants and attractions, which have been able to rely on consistent Canadian travel in recent years.”
Apparently Canadians take a dimmer view of the United States when its president arbitrarily hits their country with destructive, ill-conceived tariffs, recklessly blows up cross-border projects, threatens to seize it by force, and even daydreams openly about reducing it to a vassal state. While Canadian travel to the U.S. has been declining for some time, the News notes, the “severity of 2025’s drop was unique.”
Which is taking a toll on Michigan. As an official with the Michigan Chamber of Commerce told the paper: “Canadians are very important to American businesses.”
As it happens, there are at least three competitive races in Michigan over GOP-controlled House seats whose outcome could help determine control of the House. Also up for grabs is retiring Democratic Senator Gary Peters’s open seat, an essential hold if Democrats are to have any chance of winning the Senate.
Democratic efforts to flip the 10th congressional district illustrate the problem that Trump’s abusiveness toward Canada poses for Republicans. It straddles parts of Macomb County—home to the fabled Reagan Democrat and the seat of a lot of industry—and its economy is heavily interdependent with Canada’s. So in this region, Trump’s attacks on Canada are hard for Republicans to defend.
“Michigan and Ontario are uniquely connected,” Christina Hines, a former prosecutor who’s running for that seat as a Democrat, told me. “We should be protecting cross-border trade and cooperation—not escalating conflict.”
We’ve already seen this sort of thing become a problem for the state’s GOP candidates. When Trump recently threatened to block the Gordie Howe International Bridge project, Democrats pounced, and two vulnerable House GOP incumbents went suspiciously quiet about it. One Republican consultant warned that the threat could cost the GOP the Senate race.
Now, Democrats say, they will highlight the broader damage that Trump’s crazed obsession with Canada has done to the state—and use it against vulnerable GOP Representatives Bill Huizenga and Tom Barrett in the 4th and 10th districts as well. Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee spokesperson Katie Smith told me: “We will ensure voters know that Michigan Republicans fully stood by Trump’s unprovoked, reckless attacks on a major trading partner that are hurting Michigan’s economy and costing families.”
Will it work? If so, it’ll confirm another surprising thing about the Trump era: Maybe, just maybe, Trump’s malignant nationalism is turning out to be bad politics in addition to being terrible in all sorts of other ways.
As I’ve noted before, certain commentators discerned in his 2024 victory a durable shift toward Trumpist nationalism at a deep cultural level. Yet since then, voters have seen Trump’s paramilitary goons violently snatching immigrants from their communities, and they’ve turned against such deportations in a big way. Support for immigration as a positive national good has soared. Trump’s tariffs are deeply unpopular, not just because they hike costs but also because rising percentages view trade itself as a good thing.
As Paul Krugman writes, a big reason Trumpism is floundering politically is that he can’t hold himself out as an “economic savior” who inherited a crisis that justified his drastic measures. After all, he actually inherited a decent economy, and many voters think he’s made it worse.
Yet Trump still seems to believe that Americans will rally to his belligerent economic nationalism all the same. He thinks they will reflexively continue to see everything through the lens of zero-sum conflict, just as he does.
But this Michigan case presents a vivid example of Trumpian nationalism proving materially bad for ordinary people in a politically legible way. Southeast Michigan’s economy is deeply intertwined with that of Canada, with goods flowing both ways and people crossing the border in both directions to frequent sports and cultural events. Trump’s tariffs on Canada are already hurting Michigan automakers and their workers. With Republicans actively encouraging Trump as he deliberately antagonizes Canada with tariffs and other malicious threats, Democrats can hold themselves out as a check on this unending madness.
“If we are able to take back the House,” Democratic House candidate Hines told me, then “we can improve our relationship with Canada. We’ll see visits jump back up as people feel like they have a reliable partner in the United States again.”
In short: It’s often suggested that Trumpism has tapped into a deep cultural zeitgeist. But we may actually be seeing a cultural backlash in the other direction: in favor of immigration, trade, and—let’s get really crazy here—positive-sum international interdependence. In U.S. politics, believe it or not, stranger things have happened.
