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With an upcoming FIFA World Cup being staged across the nation, 2026 was supposed to be a bumper year for tourism to the United States, driven in part by hordes of arriving soccer fans. And yet, the U.S. tourism industry is worried. While the rest of the world saw a travel bump in 2025, with global international arrivals up 4%, the U.S. saw a downturn. The number of foreign tourists who came to the United States fell by 5.4% during the yeara sharper decline than the one experienced in 2017-18, the last time, outside the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, that the industry was gripped by fears of a travel slump. Policy stances from the Trump administration on everything from immigration to tariffs, along with currency swings and stricter border controls, have seemingly proved a turnoff to travelers from other countries, especially Canadiansthe single largest source of foreign tourists for the United States. Canadian travel to the U.S. fell by close to 30% in 2025. But it is not just visitors from Canada who are choosing to avoid the United States. Travel from Australia, India, and Western Europe, among others, has also shrunk. We are experts in tourism. And while we dont possess a crystal ball, we believe that the tourism decline of 2025 could well continue through 2026. The evidence appears clear: Washingtons ongoing policies are putting off would-be travelers. In other words, the tourism industry is in the midst of a Trump slump. Fewer Canadians heading south The impact of Donald Trumps policies are perhaps most pronounced when looking north of the U.S. border. According to the U.S. Travel Association, Canadian visitors generated approximately 20.4 million visits and roughly $20.5 billion in visitor spending in 2024, supporting about 140,000 American jobs. The economic impact of fewer Canadian visitors in 2025 affects mostly border states that depend heavily on people driving across the border for retail, restaurants, casinos, and short-stay hotels. The sharp drop in return trips by car to Canada is a direct indication that border economies might be facing stress. This has led elected officials and tourism professionals to woo Canadians in recent months, sometimes with Canadian-only deals. And it isnt just border states. In Las Vegas, some hotels are now offering currency rate parity between Canadian and U.S. dollars for rooms and gambling vouchers in a bid to attract customers. Winter-sun states, such as Florida, Arizona, and California, are facing both fewer short-stay arrivals and an emerging drop-off in Canadian snowbirds. Reports indicate a noticeable increase in Canadians listing U.S. properties in Florida and Arizona for sale and canceling seasonal plans, threatening lodging, health care spending, and property tax revenue. Economic and safety concerns Economic policies pursued by the Trump administration appear to be among the main reasons visitors are staying away from the United States. Multiple tariff announcementspushing tariffs to the highest levels since 1935along with tougher border-related rhetoric and an aggressive foreign policy have contributed to a negative perception of the U.S. among would-be tourists. Many foreigners report feeling unwelcome or uncertain about travel to the U.S., and some public leaders from Canada and Europe have urged citizens to spend domestically, instead. This significantly reduced intent to travel to the U.S. in 2025. Meanwhile, exhange rates and inflation have further affected some aspiring travelers, especially Canadians. The Canadian dollar was weakened in 2025, making U.S. trips more expensive. This disproportionately affected day-trip and shopping-driven border crossings. Travelers are also staying away from the U.S. because of safety concerns. Several countries have posted travel advisories about the risks of traveling to the U.S., with Germany being the latest. Although most worries are related to increased border controls, recent aggressive tactics by immigration agents have added to potential visitors decisions to avoid the U.S. A wake-up call for the U.S. The current tourism outlook is reason for concern. Julia Simpson, president and CEO of the industry association World Travel and Tourism Council, has described the situation as a wake-up call for the U.S. government. The worlds biggest travel and tourism economy is heading in the wrong direction, she said in May 2025. While other nations are rolling out the welcome mat, the U.S. government is putting up the closed sign. According to estimates, the U.S. stood to lose about $30 billion in international tourism in 2025 as travelers chose to travel elsewhere. The disappointing figures for U.S. tourism follow a longer trend. The share of global international travel heading to the U.S. fell from 8.4% in 1996 to 4.9% in 2024 and was expected to drop to 4.8% in 2025. Meanwhile, arrivals to other top tourism destinations, including France, Greece, Mexico and Italy, are set to increase. The decline is also being felt by the business tourism sector, with every major global region sending fewer people to the U.S. for work. A World Cup bump? So what does that mean for the upcoming FIFA World Cup, with 75% of the soccer matches being hosted across the United States? Traditionally, host nations benefit from sports events, although impacts are often overestimated. After a disappointing year, the U.S. tourism sector expects the World Cup to boost visits and revenue. But Trumps foreign policy may undermine those expectations. A new visa integrity fee of $250 and plans for social media screening of some visitors make travel to the U.S. less attractive. And there are growing calls for a boycott of the U.S. following some of Trumps policies, including his aggressive stance about Greenland. Former FIFA President Sepp Blatter has suggested that fans avoid going to the U.S. for the World Cup. It remains to be seen whether fans will follow his call. Bookings for flights and hotels were up after the dates and venues of games were announced in December. But current political rhetoric is affecting travel decisions, especially given that fans from some specific countries may not be able to get visas. The U.S. government has imposed travel bans on Senegal, Ivory Coast, Iran, and Haiti, all of which have qualified for the World Cup. European soccer leaders have even discussed the possibility of a boycott, although such an action is unlikely to happen, given the revenue at stake for national teams and football associations. Will the Trump slump continue? White House policies look unlikely to drastically change in the next few months. And this causes concern for tourism professionals, although most have remained silent about the recent immigration crackdown. To make matters worse, federal funding for Brand USA, the national destination marketing organization, was cut deeply in mid-2025, leading to staff shortages that have reduced the countrys capacity to counter negative sentiment through positive promotion. Soccer fans tend to be passionate about following their national side. And this could offset some of the impact of the Trump travel slump. Yet, with sky-high atch ticket prices and the international reputation of the U.S. as a tourism destination damaged, we believe it is unlikely that the tourism industry will recover in 2026. It will take a long time and good strategies to repair the serious damage done to the nations image among travelers in the rest of the world. Frédéric Dimanche is a professor and former director (2015-2025) of the Ted Rogers School of Hospitality and Tourism Management at Toronto Metropolitan University. Kelley A. McClinchey is on the teaching faculty of geography and environmental studies at Wilfrid Laurier University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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As the Trump administrations crackdown on immigration continues, keeping up with Immigrations and Custom Enforcement can feel like navigating a maze. From stories of agents raiding worksites and taking children in broad daylight to reported plans for new detention centers, the daily onslaught of alarming news makes it difficult to see the full picture of ICEs actions at any given moment. Data journalist Michael Sparks is working on a solution. Sparks is a cartographer and coding editor at the Outlaw Ocean Project, a nonprofit journalism organization producing investigative stories about human rights, labor, and environmental concerns at sea. Hes applied skills from that role to create a new investigative database, The Machinery of Mass Detention: A Record of What Has Been Lost, designed as a centralized place to get updates on ICEs movements. The database, which is housed at icetracking.org, includes continuously updating sections that track statistics like the total number of people currently detained by the U.S., the percentage of people held in ICE facilities with no criminal record, and the number of people who have died in ICE custody in the past month and year. The information is presented in succinct sections with citations from major news outlets that are easily fact-checked. Icetracking.org is a devastating but necessary resource to keep the public informed on the state of the administrations immigration crackdown from a macro perspective, rather than simply in constant bursts of new information. [Screenshot: icetracking.org] How one data journalist is keeping track of ICE In his day job at the Outlaw Ocean Project, Sparks uses tens of thousands of government documents, news articles, and social media posts to build databases of environmental and human rights abuses at sea. Before that, he served as a product developer at The New York Times for four years, where he honed his data storytelling skills. Sparks says he felt compelled to use his skillset to hold power to account after Minneapolis residents Renee Good and Alex Pretti were killed by ICE officers in January. I knew there was another vast amount of cruelty happening all over the country, and wanted people to realize that, he says. Sparks took a little less than three weeks from starting the site to debuting it this week. Its essentially a database composed of aggregated reports and stories from national outlets like The New York Times, The Washington Post, and CBS News, as well as local sources like Tulsa World, Houston Chronicle, and The Minnesota Star Tribune. The tracker’s code is programmed to send Sparks a list of relevant articles from these trusted sites every 48 hours, which he then manually approves or rejects, writes up a summary, and uses to update the site. In a memo at the bottom of the site, Sparks emphasizes the human toll behind the database: What the numbers cannot capture is the texture of individual lives disruptedthe five-year-old taken from his walk home from school, the nurse shot dead while filming a protest, the grandmother detained at a routine government appointment. These cases, documented in the sections that follow, are not abstractions. They are the human particulars of a policy that has reshaped the landscape of American civil liberties. [Screenshot: icetracking.org] “I want people to feel emotion and be motivated to act” Icetracking.orgs true impact rests in the way it displays information. Sparks says he pulled inspiration from The New Yorkers UX for his design, opting for a simple color palette of white and black with pops of red for the most important information, and organizing the whole page into clear sections. When people first open icetracking.org, they see a succinct layout of seven key statistics, including the total number of people currently detained by ICE (around 73,000); the percentage of those being held with no criminal convictions (73.6%); and the number of people who died in ICE custody in 2025 (32, with 2026 expected to be even worse). Sparks says he updates these statistics any time one of his trusted sources publishes a new estimate. Users can then navigate to a header bar, organized by sections, for more information on each of the categories. Each subcategory similarly opens with a layout of the most significant statistics, followed by links to top artcles. For one section, titled Corporate Network: Who Profits From ICE, Sparks created a color-coded chart to track the kinds of companies that have provided funding or support to ICE, as well as the scale of their contributions. These include the detention facility contractor GEO Group, the AI technologies company Palantir, and the tactical communications service CACI International. The corporate network felt super important, Sparks says. These are detention ‘networks.’ Donald Trump and Stephen Miller are not doing this themselves. This section deserves a lot more reporting that, in an ideal world, I could do. So far, Sparks says, the reaction to the tool has been a mix of gratitude and horror at seeing this information presented in one place. To be honest, thats the kind of response Im looking for, he says. I want people to feel emotion and be motivated to act.
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E-Commerce
When we minimize our suffering with statements like I shouldnt complainothers have it much harder than me, it can seem evolved, empathetic, even wise. In professional culture, this phrase often earns admiration. It signals gratitude, resilience, and perspective. However, beneath that polished humility lies a psychological defense mechanism that can quietly block emotional growth. That mindset reflects a subtle form of emotional bypassing, which is the tendency to sidestep uncomfortable emotions by rationalizing them away. This ends up muting, rather than healing. It may seem like a sign of maturity. However, empathy bypassing often prevents us from engaging honestly with our own reality, particularly in high-performance environments where vulnerability already feels risky. The psychology of bypassing The term bypassing comes from psychologist John Welwood, who described spiritual bypassing in the 1980s as the use of spiritual or moral reasoning to avoid painful emotions. In modern workplaces, bypassing shows up less as spirituality and more as rationalization. Its the act of layering gratitude or perspective over stress until feelings become invisible. Bypassing certainly played a part in my journey toward a catastrophic burnout as a corporate finance lawyer. When colleagues around me experienced layoffs, I buried my misery. Complaining about my situation as a high-flying young solicitor at a Magic Circle firm felt indulgent, and potentially dangerous to my career. This kind of thinking might seem admirable, but research shows that emotional suppression increases stress responses rather than soothing them. Avoidance may feel like composure in the short term, but over time, failing to acknowledge what were feeling can amplify pressure and fatigue. Why ‘others have it harder’ feels so right to say Its easy to see why this phraseology feels comforting. After all, it comes with values we admiregratitude, compassion, and humility. Recognizing that others face greater obstacles fosters perspective and keeps self-pity in check, which are two vital traits for emotional intelligence. However, when this sentiment becomes habitual, it can cross an invisible line from awareness to avoidance. Psychologist Kristin Neff notes that true self-compassion depends on acknowledging sufferingnot ranking it. When we tell ourselves our pain is less valid because others have it worse, were confusing empathy with denial. We treat compassion as a zero-sum game, where we see attending to our own emotions as somehow stealing from others. In truth, self-compassion is critical to our capacity to express compassion to those around us. By acknowledging our own pain, we improve our ability to have a genuine understanding of anothers. When empathy becomes avoidance Empathy bypassing is one of the most elegantand dangerousforms of denial. When we minimize our emotions, we distort the feedback loop that helps us understand our limits and boundaries. Over time, what begins as realism morphs into guilt. A 2019 study found that people who habitually minimize their own distress report greater anxiety and reduced well-being. The protective act of keeping perspective can end up silently draining your mental health. In professional settings, this often manifests as people downplaying the level of stress theyre experiencing or leaders who feel undeserving of support. They tell themselves theyre gratefulbut that gratitude quietly erases their need for care. It causes us to isolate, creating even further harm. Ive noticed this tendency in myself recently in light of global events. Gratitude is an invaluable psychological experience, and building it consciously improves perspective. But when it acts as a lightning rod for all our suffering, it can drastically undermine our emotional well-being. The paradox is that when were empathy bypassing, we seem composed. In fact, the opposite is happening; were actually detached. It might look like strength, but its often suppression. And while culture might reward suppression, it actually ends up reducing both resilience and innovation, which are two qualities that workforces rely on most. The cultural cost of constant perspective Many organizations unintentionally reinforce this pattern through what might be called performative positivity. Gratitude campaigns, resilience bootcamps, and culture slogans about toughness can (if you dont implement them effectively) make emotional honesty feel out of bounds at work. When others have it harder becomes an unspoken moral code, employees begin to silence legitimate concerns. Burnout turns into a badge of endurance. People start seeing expressions of vulnerability as complaints. The result is a well-intentioned culture that values gratitudebut punishes truth. This is where psychological safety comes in. Workplaces where people feel free to express emotions and admit struggle are more collaborative and productive. When employees believe that only unshakeable optimism is acceptable, performance may rise temporarily, but authenticity declines. This leads to a slow erosion of trust disguised as high engagement. The key to balancing gratitude and honesty To move past self-bypassing, we need to treat empathy for others and honesty with ourselves as complementary, not contradictory. The key is integration and allowing multiple realities to exist at once. We can be grateful for having work and still find that work exhausting. We can recognize that someone else is struggling more severely and still acknowledge our frustration or disappointment. Emotional integrity lies in holding both truths without collapsing one into the other. Practicing a more honest form of kindness So how can professionals engage with their struggles without slipping into self-erasure? Start by noticing how often gratitude includes a but. Instead of thinking, Im stressed, but others have it worse, try, Im stressed, and others have it worse. That small changereplacing but with andcreates space for paradox and complexity. It permits you to feel whats true without diminishing empathy for others. Leaders can model this integration publicly. Admitting limits isnt weakness: its acknowledging psychological reality. By acknowledging your own pressures without minimizing them, you create environments where emotional honesty coexists with performance. Plenty of research showsthat self-compassion actually strengthens motivation and resilience, not erodes them. The same principle applies across teams: Acknowledging difficulty deepens accountability, because people who feel seen and valued tend to feel engaged, too. The importance of feeling fully Theres nothing inherently wrong with acknowledging that others have it harderbut kindness without self-inclusion becomes self-neglect. In a culture obsessed with optimism, the quiet act of acknowledging ones limits can be a radical form of strength. You dont build real resilience through comparison, you forge it through integrationthe ability to stand firmly in ones humanity, even when others suffering looms larger. When we stop ranking pain and start recognizing it, we trade moral comfort for genuine integrity. And in doing so, we not only become kinder humanswe become more honest ones too.
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The legend of Sisyphus goes like this: As punishment for cheating death and embarrassing the gods, he is banished to the underworld and sentenced to push a boulder up a hill. As Sisyphus nears the peak, the boulder rolls back down, and he must start over. And the episode repeats for eternity. I risk sounding melodramatic by comparing this story to the plight of the employed in 2026. Fair enough. But consider, if you will, the cycles in which a modern worker finds herself. She masters a new skill, and its deemed outdated. She learns a new software, and is told to use a different one. She gets a new boss, and the company is reorganized. She applies for a job, and gets no response. She lands a new job, and the job is dissolved. The dark core of the story of Sisyphus is not that his toil is repetitive or even that its eternal. Its that the work is erased as soon as its done. The punishmentapparently the worst that the Greek gods could think ofis to accomplish nothing. If our skills and our jobs and the fruits of our labor are simply meaningless, are we not also climbing that hill with our own boulders? The problem of change fatigue Change fatigue is just that: fatigue. This has been studied, quite extensively, by psychologists. A 2024 long-term study of more than 50,000 workers in Germany found that organizational changeslike reorgs, layoffs, outsourcing, and mergersare linked to things like sleep disturbance, nervousness, tiredness, and depression, and that the more changes an individual undergoes, the more likely they are to have these symptoms. Organizational change is often implemented at the cost of employees working conditions and health, the researchers conclude. Dutch academics studied the effects of repeated changes in a big European bank (they wouldnt say which one) and found that the more change that workers experienced, the more likely they were to feel change fatigue. And the more fatigued they felt, the more likely they were to resist the next change. The more resistant employees became, the less likely it was that the companys changes would succeed. But even those who supported the goals of the change were just as resistant as their unsupportive coworkers. The problem wasnt the change itself; it was the knowledge that another change would come along right after it, wiping out the last. The company couldnt be trusted. Says the employee to the employer: Its not me; its you. A 2026 report from McLean & Company called change fatigue an operational nightmare. The scholars who studied the relationship between repetitive changes and employee resistance likened executives tendency to reorganize to a gambling habit. When there is no achievementonly work Work is becoming less repetitive. Automation and reorgs and reskilling mean that what we did yesterday, or the way we did it, is not what well do tomorrow. Software engineers dont have to write every line of code, recruiters dont have to review every application, and customer service reps no longer have to review and tag every ticketan AI agent can do all of that. So the ennui felt in the modern workplace is not the result of tedium, but of constant change that wipes out the progress of the individual. Why climb yet another hill only to find yourself at the bottom again? There is no achievementonly work. In 1942’s The Myth of Sisyphus, philosopher Albert Camus describes two natural responses to the meaninglessness of toil: that the suffering will either redeem or defeat. But he prescribes something else: defiance. Camus believed that the most important part of the story is when Sisyphus descends the hill, fully aware of the useless task ahead. What is he thinking? One must imagine Sisyphus happy, he writes, not glibly. Happy, because he recognizes how absurd his situation is. Happy, because he is free from illusion. Thats Camus definition of defiance. Defiance for the 21st century worker may be rejecting the illusion that work must be meaningful to make the worker meaningful. The gods in the myth of Sisyphus demanded the climb. Todays gods demand the climb, but also the method, the enthusiasm, and the willingness to pretend it will last. They should not be surprised when workers stop pretending.
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E-Commerce
On February 10, the Environmental Protection Agency said it would ditch its endangerment findingthe mechanism that allows the government to regulate climate pollution. It’s “the single biggest attack in U.S. history on federal authority to tackle the climate crisis,” Manish Bapna, president and CEO of the environmental nonprofit Natural Resources Defense Council, said in a recent press briefing. Here’s a brief primer on what the rule is and what the repeal might mean. What is the endangerment finding? In 2009, the EPA issued a ruling saying that six greenhouse gasesincluding carbon dioxide and methanewere a danger to public health and welfare, citing a mountain of scientific evidence. The EPA issues similar endangerment findings for every pollutant it regulates, from mercury to ozone. (In the case of greenhouse gases, its known as the endangerment finding because it was a landmark decision.) Once an endangerment finding is in place, the EPA is required to regulate the pollutant and propose emission standards. What led up to it? When the Clean Air Act passed in 1970, it tasked the EPA with regulating pollutants that threaten health or welfareincluding the climate. The agency didn’t initially regulate greenhouse gases, but in the late 1990s it acknowledged it had the authority to act. In 2003, the Bush EPA reversed course, declaring that CO2 and other greenhouse gases werent air pollutants. The Supreme Court overruled that four years later, calling greenhouse gases unambiguously pollutants and ordering the EPA to act on science and set vehicle standards. What regulations did it help create? In 2023, the EPA finalized a rule to reduce methane, a potent greenhouse gas, at oil and gas plants. In 2024, the agency created rules to tackle greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, which are responsible for around a quarter of the countrys climate pollution. The EPA also finalized clean cars standards to reduce pollution from passenger cars, light trucks, and vans, and new standards for heavy-duty trucks; transportation accounts for around 28% of U.S. emissions. Now what? The repeal is specifically tied to vehicle emission standards, so that’s what the administration will try to ditch next. Although the methane and power plant regulations also rely on the endangerment finding, those will take extra steps to undo. (Its worth noting, however, that the EPA has already proposed getting rid of the power plant regulations and delayed implementing the methane rule.) It’s likely that the changes could eventually fail in court; since 2009, the impacts from climate change have become even more obvious, from more extreme heat waves to more destructive wildfires, storms, and rising seas. The Trump administration is recycling the Bush administration’s arguments that CO2 and other greenhouse gases aren’t air pollutants, which the Supreme Court already rejected. What do the changes mean for business? Some automakers, including Ford, have argued for stability in greenhouse gas regulations and supported the EPAs vehicle emission standards. Regulatory uncertainty makes it harder for companies to plan. “Undermining the endangerment finding would create more chaos, risk, and uncertainty for businesses already grappling with rising costs, extreme weather, and market volatility,” says Sean Hackett, a senior manager for energy transition at the nonprofit Environmental Defense Fund. “We’re thinking about it within the bigger context that this rollback is just the latest in the series of actions that threaten business stability, investment, and innovation.” The American Petroleum Institute has said that although it supports the repeal of emission standards for vehicles, it believes that the EPA has the authority to regulate climate pollution from power plants and other stationary sources. (Legal experts from the Natural Resources Defense Council argue that there isn’t a distinction, and that both types of pollution can be regulated.) API supprts methane regulations and says that the industry is working to reduce emissions. For automakers that are already dealing with the loss of EV incentives, it’s one more factor that could push American companies further behind global competitors that are moving to electric cars. “Repealing the finding doesn’t remove climate risk or investor expectations or global market demandswhat it does do is it removes that stable federal reference point that companies use to plan,” Hackett says. “The regulatory whiplash from removing the endangerment finding would make it harder to sequence their investments in things like engines, batteries, supply chains, and workforce training. Then that uncertainty itself becomes a material financial risk.”
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E-Commerce
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