“I am disappointed in our country”: American tourists who want to go unnoticed in France in the Trump era

Walking under a radiant sun through the impeccably rake gravel of the Tullerías de Paris gardens, American tourists Barbara and Rick Wilson did not go precisely incoginite. But that same morning, on his first trip to France, Rick, 74, had taken unusual caution.

Before leaving the hotel, he had taken a small piece of black adhesive tape and covered the flag of the bars and stars in the corner of his baseball cap.

“We are fed up. It’s horrible. Simply horrible,” Rick says, while he and his wife reflected on the sudden feeling of shame that, they say, they now feel, as Americans, after the abrupt measures of President Trump President Trump about global commercial tariffs.

Barbara, 70, even had a small Canadian pledgee in her pocket, a gift from another tourist, who thought it could be useful if it was necessary to resort to more underground.

“I am disappointed in our country. We are outraged by tariffs,” he explains.

A few meters away, among the crowd that congregated in front of the Louvre Museum, another American couple also tried to maintain a lower profile than usual.

Chris EPPS, a 56 -year -old New York lawyer, had decided to dress a little different in the visit he would do today.

“I do not wear the New York Yankees cap. I left it at the hotel. People may approach us and treat us differently. But so far, all good,” he adds.

While the world dealt with the implications of Donald Trump’s turbulent strategy to transform the global commercial system, the impacts feel not only in stock markets, companies and investment funds, but also in more subtle ways, especially here in France, a country that continues to attract a large number of American tourists and that maintains a centenary relationship, sometimes narrows already tense with that country.

To be clear, there are no indications that Americans are less welcome here than before. Our interviews with a random tourist team were also held shortly before President Trump reversed some of his tariffs.

However, the shock and anger generated in Europe by the events of last week have fed the perception of a much greater transatlantic rupture: a displacement of the tectonic plates of international relations.

Of course, it is very soon to draw conclusions. The Americans are not even united regarding the actions of their government and much of the evidence of the change of opinion is anecdotal.

But some perceptible effects on travel, tourism, academic world and other areas are already appreciated.

“It is a drastic fall,” says Philippe Glooguen, founder of Le Guide Du Routard, one of the most prestigious travel guides in France.

Sitting behind his desk, in Paris, he points out that the orders he has received from his guides over the United States have fallen 25% so far this year.

It is not that Gloaguen complains. In fact, quite the opposite.

“I am very proud of my clients. They are young, with good training and very democratic. This was the reality for Putin … and for China. We know when there is a dictatorship in a country,” he says, arguing that his French readers began to see the United States in a similar way.

“They do not want to spend their money in the United States,” Glooguen continues, who sees his publication as a kind of global democratic weather vane.

He says that the abrupt fall of sales in the guides over the United States was compensated by an increase in sales of books on “Canada and other countries.”

Other evidence of the tourism sector begin to support the idea of ​​a growing disenchantment with the United States.

The Oxford Economics projections company already predicts a 8.9% drop in the number of French traveling to the United States this year compared to 2024.

Another recent analysis of French expatriates residing in the United States, revealed that a notable 78% of them is now “particularly pessimistic” about their future in the country, while 73% of respondents in France, in March, believed that the United States was no longer an “ally.”

While drinking coffee in the morning in a Parisian cafeteria, Nicolas Conquer, a Trump supporter with dual Franco-American nationality and leader of the Parisian branch of Republicans abroad, acknowledged “certain volatility” due to tariffs, but argued that a “media narrative” was creating a false printing of tensions in transatlantic relationships.

“I’m still firm … reminding people that France and the United States have been the oldest allies,” says Conquer and adds that any negative reaction to the Trump agenda of “United States first” is based on a “child or immature” vision of international relations.

“Everyone knows that we must have strong sovereignty, a solid patriotism, and that … as Trump’s supporters bet on the United States first, we would expect that … European governments also promoted the United Kingdom first, Germany first, France first,” he says.

But the concern for the recent actions and rhetoric of the Trump government – not only in relation to tariffs, but also with Ukraine and Greenland – is widespread throughout France and difficult to overlook.

Politicians, newspapers and television interview programs have dedicated themselves to analyzing the changes, often with a tone of bitter disappointment.

In practice, the result has sometimes been to offer support to people who are perceived as victims of the Trump government, with French scientific institutions, backed by the French government, beginning to offer places to US researchers who have lost their jobs due to cuts in government financing.

In other places, there are signs of nervousness to the simple fact of traveling to the United States.

The prestigious School of Higher Studies in Social Sciences (EHESS) recently sent a warning to its students, after reports of foreigners who were interrogated about their political beliefs and were denied entry to the US.

“We urge them to be extremely cautious when traveling abroad. It is important not BBC

The relations between Paris and Washington have exceeded many previous crises, such as the one that exploded after France’s decision not to participate in the 2003 Iraq invasion or the most recent dispute over the calls to return the statue of freedom.

But the friendship of France with the United States has never been as unconditionally “special” as they proclaim, for example, the British.

French can worship Hollywood cinema, music country and the charm of the American dream, and celebrate ties that date back to the United States War of Independence, but have also maintained a certain distance, rejecting what is known here as in the spring-Imema And, today more than ever, celebrating the determination of the president of Gaulle to build a totally French nuclear deterrence, independent of both NATO and the United States.

“The American people are still our friend, but [Trump] He is no longer our ally, “said French former president François Hollande.

“It is definitely a ‘love’ relationship and not always ‘like’,” said Kerry Halferty -Hardy, president of the American Club of Paris, citing the ambivalent lyrics of the famous song by Serge Gainsbourg, “Je t’aime – Moi Non Plus.”

Looking towards the Eiffel Tower, from their Paris apartment, Halferty-Hardy argued that the shared values ​​of freedom and the illustration that unite France and the United States “cannot be easily eliminated, and certainly not on the basis of a government”, but acknowledged that “no one can ignore what is seen in the headlines.”

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