After President Trump threatened and imposed Canadian tariffs, Democrat Gov. Janet Mills – with the help of the state’s largest newspaper – cried that Maine tourism would suffer a backlash.
Unfortunately for Janet, tourism spending actually went up last year, according to a report Friday in the usually-Mills-friendly Portland Press Herald.
The paper of course had been glad to join its friend the governor cheerleading her anti-Trump fervor.
But now that the 2025 numbers are in, all the sky-is-falling feigning over fear that Trump’s offending Canadian tourists and scaring them off from visiting Maine proved to be a complete fallacy.
The Maine Office of Tourism reported that tourists last year spent $9.37 billion in Maine – up 1.4 percent from 2024 (despite or because of Trump).
Though there were 4 percent fewer visitors overall, those who did come spent more money.
So which would pizza stands in Old Orchard Beach prefer – tourists or their money?
The answer is the only thing that really matters to them – making more money, even if from fewer cheese heads.
Based on Press Herald reporting in 2025-2026, Trump administration tariffs and trade tensions with Canada caused a “significant drop” in Canadian visitors to Maine.
But that’s actually not true.
Canadian visits last year dropped only slightly, by less than 2 percent.
And those who did come spent proportionally more money than they did the year before.
Though Mills paints Canadians as being critical to Maine’s tourism economy, the reality is international visitors to Maine represent less than 5 percent of the total tourist count.
And most of them last year came from – you guessed it – Canada.
The Trump policies prompted only a few Canadian tourists to cancel trips, opting to stay home due to allegedly feeling unwelcome.
In the end the 1.8 percent drop in Canadian visits to Maine was an insignificant drop in the ocean, especially since those who came were big spenders.
Mills had predicted a drop of up to 25 percent in tourists due to trade tensions and tariffs she blamed on Trump’s tariffs on Canadian goods and strained diplomatic relations.
The Press Herald a year ago quoted Mills as being “deeply concerned about the impact of the president’s tariff policies and harmful rhetoric on our nation’s relationship with Canada.”
In the final analysis the “harmful rhetoric” actually came from Janet Mills, a point the paper failed to point out in its story Friday on the latest tourist numbers.
As it turned out, her predictions were 98.2 percent wrong.
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It should be up, Maine is as expensive to visit as it is to live here.