Australian tourists are shunning Donald Trump’s America as a tourist destination amid draconian US measures against foreigners. The LA riots won’t help. Andrew Gardiner reports.
Australians are shunning the US as a travel destination as its new President, Donald Trump, makes America a more dangerous place to live, work and even visit. But even those brave enough to board a US-bound plane and play Russian Roulette with America’s air traffic control systems might have given the place a miss had they known how bad it truly is.
These numbers are not likely to improve with the attempts at banning international students, the latest visitor exclusion list, and the images from the LA riots.
Travel to the US from Australia dropped by 7% over the 12 months ending in March this year, but the most precipitous plunge within that period came after Trump’s inauguration in January.
It’s a worldwide phenomenon. According to Bloomberg, foreign visitor numbers to the US in 2025 were forecast to grow 8.8%. In May, the forecast was revised to an 8.7% drop. “Eleven of the top 20 markets for US visits have fallen this year through April, according to US and Canadian government data.”
Canada is top of that list with a drop of 15%.
Tourists scared away
The full extent of the danger has been kept from Australians by the media, while anaemic travel advice from a government anxious not to offend Trump lest he slap a new tariff on our oleaginous fruits? A Google search of one of Trump’s more pertinent border policies – visitors denied entry over messages on their phones – found just one Australian mention of this, and none in our traditional legacy media.
Let’s take a closer look at Trump’s North Korea-like seizure and scrutiny of phones and other devices before visitors are allowed into the country. If you’ve Tweeted, texted or emailed anything critical of the new administration, anything deemed ‘anti-semitic’ on Israel and Gaza or a bunch of other proscribed phrases which vary from week to week, chances are you’ll be turned back or worse.
Turned back would be the best-case among a bunch of egregious options. That only happens if the plane you arrived on is returning whence it came, and has vacant seats you may have to pay for. If not, you could be detained – probably in an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility with other deportees, mostly from Latin America – for what could be months.
Then there’s the American pastime of racial profiling. Australian passport holders should generally get a better run from ICE – unless, of course, they don’t fit the White Anglo stereotype Americans have of us.
Flight Centre CEO and founder Graham Turner says the problem gets even worse if you’re coming in from Australia under a different country’s passport. “Middle Eastern in particular, but other passports coming out of Australia can be quite problematical,” he said.
Associate Professor Lee Morgenbesser of Griffith University described the new reality facing visitors to the US as “unprecedented and somewhat scary”. “The arbitrary nature of whatever a border officer decides at a particular point in time is a bit more frightening than very clear guidance of, ‘You should not come here’,” he added.
To recap, months of incarceration could await Australians over that text you forgot you sent calling Trump a clown during his first term (2017-21). It turns out free speech carries a price in the land of the First Amendment.
The Trump cult
If anything, it gets worse once you’re inside the US. The scrutiny doesn’t stop at the border, with tourists subject to further questioning and even flight attendants (US citizens) reportedly asked: “What do you think of our president?”
But it’s the state of American society that’s ringing the loudest alarm bells for visitors. Division, usually along America’s deep racial faultlines, is Trump’s bread and butter, a political ‘ace in the hole’ used repeatedly, and to great effect, during his first term.
Why wouldn’t Trump go back to that poisonous well? During a 2024 debate with Kamala Harris, we saw a hint of what was to come: “In Springfield, Ohio, (Haitian immigrants are) eating the dogs, they’re eating the cats … they’re eating the pets of the people that live there”.
Once in office, his officials have arrested, deported and renditioned (kidnapped, some say) more than 100,000 migrants – some of them in the US legally – to places like notorious Guantanamo Bay, or the secretive mega-prison in El Salvador where the only way out, the local justice minister says, is ”in a coffin”. As people took to the streets of Los Angeles this weekend to protest what they saw as neo-fascist overreach, Trump deployed 2,000 California National Guard troops over the governor’s objections.
Trump “is sowing chaos so they can have an excuse to escalate. That is not the way any civilised country behaves”, California Governor Gavin Newsom posted.
But it’s America’s deepest racial fissure – the one involving African Americans – that could give Trump his best opportunity to distract, divide and – some say – dig his heels in and stay on as President longer than he’s constitutionally allowed.
With that in mind, perhaps, Trump pardoned and freed members of the racist Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, who are some of his staunchest supporters. His officials even canvassed the pardoning of Derek Chauvin, the white Minneapolis police officer who murdered George Floyd by kneeling on his windpipe for nine-and-a-half minutes, sparking race riots (and the Black Lives Matter movement) in 2020.
“Trump built his political career with racist lies, beginning with allegations that President Obama was not born in the US”, Catalina Gonzalez and Rachel Mayo from the Center for Progressive Reform point out. At age 78, he’s not about to change.
It’s clear Trump and his administration are doing all they can to stir up trouble.
For Australians there working or as tourists, the danger of getting caught up in it all is very real.
While stopping short of an actual warning, the Federal government’s Smart Traveller site suggests Australians avoid areas where demonstrations and protests are happening due to potential unrest and violence. “Participating in a protest or demonstration can be considered a breach of status and grounds for deportation or denial of a visa and/or immigration requests”, the website goes on to say, as if Australians fresh from a forensic examination of their phones and laptops aren’t aware of that.
But it goes further than that. A targeting of intellectuals and ‘elites’ disturbingly reminiscent of Europe a century ago sees scientists and academics fleeing (or preparing to) over “safety concerns” and career threats as Trump browbeats Ivy League universities, where many Australians work.
With states like Florida banning books, is burning them such a stretch?
Perhaps nostalgic for the kind of society Trump says he wants, older Australians are the only ones actually travelling to America more this year than they did in 2024. Given the almost inevitable riots and mayhem Trump seems genuinely keen on, disaster tourists might want to check the place out too.
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An Adelaide-based graduate in Media Studies, with a Masters in Social Policy, I was an editor who covered current affairs, local government and sports for various publications before deciding on a change-of-vocation in 2002.