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For decades, the United States has been the luminous horizon of the European imagination. A place where highways cut through deserts like silver veins, where cities rise like promises, where every journey seemed like a rite of passage. But over the past year, something has shifted. The numbers whisper it first, then shout it: Europe is no longer crossing the Atlantic with the same hunger, and America is beginning to feel the void.
The decline is not a nuance. It is a contraction that in some European countries exceeds twenty percent, a cooling that swept through the first quarter like an icy wind, bringing with it a seventeen‑percent drop in travel to the United States. It is a slow but inexorable movement, as if the European imagination had suddenly lost a bit of its faith in the American myth.
And while airports register fewer arrivals, another figure—heavier, more symbolic—emerges: the United States is losing 64 billion dollars in tourism revenue. Sixty‑four billion evaporating from the coffers of hotels, museums, airlines, restaurants, national parks. Sixty‑four billion that speak not only of economic decline, but of an emotional fracture, a cultural distancing, a bond that is loosening.
The reasons intertwine like threads in a complex tapestry. America appears more rigid, more suspicious, more closed. Border controls have become stricter, and stories of sudden refusals have begun to circulate like small wounds in the collective trust. Added to this is a political climate perceived as tense and unpredictable, an America that seems less welcoming, less safe, less desirable.
And yet Europe is not a uniform bloc. Italy, for example, oscillated between a declining start to the year and an unexpected rebound in the following months, as if the American call still resisted, at least for part of the Italian public. But the overall picture remains one of cooling, of an ocean that no longer separates just two continents, but two imaginaries that once sought each other and now observe each other from afar.
The figure of those sixty‑four billion lost weighs like a symbol. It is not just money: it is the measure of a fading desire, of a charm that is cracking, of a relationship that is changing. It is proof that America, for the first time in a long while, is no longer the undisputed destination, the automatic dream, the inevitable choice.
Perhaps it is only a phase. Perhaps the world is changing, and with it the routes of desire. Perhaps Europe is seeking elsewhere what it once found in the United States: wonder, freedom, possibility. Or perhaps it is America itself that, by closing in on itself, has stopped telling its story as a place open to the world.
What remains is the fact that today, as American airports welcome fewer European accents and the streets of major cities seem a little emptier, America is losing not only travelers but a part of its own narrative. And those sixty‑four billion dollars are not just an economic loss: they are the price of an imaginary that is drifting away, slowly but inexorably.
.webp)
For decades, the United States has been the luminous horizon of the European imagination. A place where highways cut through deserts like silver veins, where cities rise like promises, where every journey seemed like a rite of passage. But over the past year, something has shifted. The numbers whisper it first, then shout it: Europe is no longer crossing the Atlantic with the same hunger, and America is beginning to feel the void.
The decline is not a nuance. It is a contraction that in some European countries exceeds twenty percent, a cooling that swept through the first quarter like an icy wind, bringing with it a seventeen‑percent drop in travel to the United States. It is a slow but inexorable movement, as if the European imagination had suddenly lost a bit of its faith in the American myth.
And while airports register fewer arrivals, another figure—heavier, more symbolic—emerges: the United States is losing 64 billion dollars in tourism revenue. Sixty‑four billion evaporating from the coffers of hotels, museums, airlines, restaurants, national parks. Sixty‑four billion that speak not only of economic decline, but of an emotional fracture, a cultural distancing, a bond that is loosening.
The reasons intertwine like threads in a complex tapestry. America appears more rigid, more suspicious, more closed. Border controls have become stricter, and stories of sudden refusals have begun to circulate like small wounds in the collective trust. Added to this is a political climate perceived as tense and unpredictable, an America that seems less welcoming, less safe, less desirable.
And yet Europe is not a uniform bloc. Italy, for example, oscillated between a declining start to the year and an unexpected rebound in the following months, as if the American call still resisted, at least for part of the Italian public. But the overall picture remains one of cooling, of an ocean that no longer separates just two continents, but two imaginaries that once sought each other and now observe each other from afar.
The figure of those sixty‑four billion lost weighs like a symbol. It is not just money: it is the measure of a fading desire, of a charm that is cracking, of a relationship that is changing. It is proof that America, for the first time in a long while, is no longer the undisputed destination, the automatic dream, the inevitable choice.
Perhaps it is only a phase. Perhaps the world is changing, and with it the routes of desire. Perhaps Europe is seeking elsewhere what it once found in the United States: wonder, freedom, possibility. Or perhaps it is America itself that, by closing in on itself, has stopped telling its story as a place open to the world.
What remains is the fact that today, as American airports welcome fewer European accents and the streets of major cities seem a little emptier, America is losing not only travelers but a part of its own narrative. And those sixty‑four billion dollars are not just an economic loss: they are the price of an imaginary that is drifting away, slowly but inexorably.