U.S. carriers must have mixed feelings about the first year of Donald Trump's second coming as POTUS. On one hand, the Department of Transportation scrapped a proposed Biden-era rule that would have required them to compensate passengers for delayed and canceled flights of their own making.
On the other hand, demand relative to the rest of the world tanked. In 2025 through Oct. 31, according to the International Air Transport Association, demand in North America grew only 0.4 percent, compared with a global average of 5.3 percent. U.S. domestic demand dropped 0.5 percent.
Concur Travel data relating specifically to business travel showed that while air bookings globally increased 2.6 percent year over year in the first half of 2025, they rose only 1 percentfor U.S. inbound and dropped 2.3 percent for U.S. outbound.
It is hard to avoid linking these figures to the policies and demeanor of the second Trump administration.
In his first month of taking office, the president issued an executive order to "ensure that all aliens seeking admission to the United States … are vetted and screened to the maximum degree." A wave of stories followed of traveler deportations and detentions, visa cancellations and even business travelers carrying burner phones and scrubbed laptops as when they visit China.
Travel security and passport and visa specialists now advise corporate clients to retain an immigration law firm on standby for employees visiting the United States. A German meetings agency told BTN Europe that international congress organizers avoid booking venues in the U.S. because they fear too many participants will face immigration hurdles.Travel from numerous countries has in any case been restricted or banned outright for various reasons, including "anti-American activity."
Even where there were no restrictions, travel slumped anyway from countries with which the POTUS decided to pick arguments. Air bookings from putative "51st state" Canada dropped 21 percent, and from Denmark, owner of acquisition/conquest target Greenland, 20 percent.
Meanwhile, Trump's "Liberation Day" tariffs dented business confidence and, accordingly, travel budgets. Public sector travel spend withered after another executive order inspired by the Department of Government Efficiency directed federal agencies to scrutinize and report on "non-essential" travel and placed a 30-day freeze on use of credit cards.
After all that came the federal shutdown. Whether responsibility lay with President Trump or elsewhere is a matter of partisan opinion. Either way, Delta Air Lines, a donor of $1 million to his inauguration, reported the bookings slump caused by the consequent air traffic control manpower shortage cost it $200 million.