Gov. Kelly Ayotte gets onto a ski lift at Mount Sunapee Resort, one of several outdoor recreation areas that anchor the state’s tourism industry, during a tour of the facility ahead of a special on-the-road Executive Council meeting on Aug. 13, 2025. (Photo by William Skipworth/New Hampshire Bulletin)
On Wednesday, Gov. Kelly Ayotte said New Hampshire has “open arms” for visitors from Canada. The data suggests that gesture hasn’t been enough to persuade them to cross the border.
New Hampshire business officials say tourism from Canada is down roughly 30% amid rising tension between the Trump administration and Canadian government.
“Absolutely the Canadian numbers are lower,” Taylor Caswell, commissioner of the state’s Department of Business and Economic Affairs, told the Governor and Executive Council during a meeting in the border town of Pittsburg last month. “I mean, they’re running at about 30% underneath what we’ve seen in prior years.”
Though the commissioner couldn’t say for sure what’s driving this decrease, he floated the strained relations between the U.S. and Canada as a possible culprit.
“It could be weather,” he said. “It could be basic economics. It could be gas prices. It could be, as we are seeing now, some difficulty and volatility between the Canadian government and the United States government.”
Customs and Border Protection data reflects this, too. The number of passenger vehicles traveling into New Hampshire, Vermont, or Maine from Canada was about 228,000 in July. That’s down about 105,000 vehicles over last year, a 32% drop. That number has been down from last year every single month since January. In total, the number of vehicles traveling into northern New England from October (the start of the agency’s fiscal year) through July was about 1.8 million. That same time period last fiscal year, it was 2.1 million.
New Hampshire’s outdoor recreation economy, particularly its mountains and lakes, have long brought tourists from both Massachusetts in the south and Canada in the north.
Since re-entering the White House in January, President Donald Trump has frequently floated the idea of annexing Canada as the “51st state,” at one point alluding to the possible use of military force. The idea has offended Canadians and prompted Prime Minister Mark Carney to rebuke it repeatedly.
At one point in a May Oval Office meeting between the two leaders, Carney told the American president Canada is “not for sale, won’t be for sale, ever,” to which Trump replied, “Never say never.”
Trump has also imposed hefty tariffs on Canada, as part of his controversial campaign to eliminate trade deficits with other countries. At the beginning of this month, Trump increased those tariffs from 25% to 35%. The tariffs are ostensibly meant to curb what Trump argues is a fentanyl and drug trafficking issue at the northern border. Goods that fall under the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement are exempt from the 35% rate.
For her part, Ayotte is scheduled to visit Canada in September for a trade mission. Asked Wednesday about her level of concern about the hit to tourism, she emphasized that “we certainly welcome the tourists from Canada.”
“That’s one of the things I’m going to just continue to promote on behalf of New Hampshire,” she said. “Not only that they’re welcome here — the Canadians — but we have open arms to them.”
She said her team is also going to be emphasizing business opportunities and relationships between New Hampshire and Canada during her visit next month. The trip is scheduled for Sept. 7-11, and Caswell will be joining her.
