China issues US travel risk alert as tariff war escalates

READ FULL ARTICLE ON TTG Asia

By Karen Yue

Published April 10, 2025

The Chinese government has issued warnings to its citizens about travel to the US amid ongoing tariff wars.

The Chinese Ministry of Culture and Tourism on April 9 reminded its citizens to assess travel risks amid “deterioration of Sino-US economic and trade relations and the domestic security situation in the US”.

The US government had earlier imposed 104 per cent duties on Chinese goods, to take effect on April 9. The levy on Chinese goods was far higher than what was imposed on other Asian countries, which ranged from 10 per cent on Singapore to 49 per cent on Cambodia.

This was met with retaliation from China, with it imposing 84 per cent tariffs on US goods from April 10.

While the US has today announced a surprise 90-day pause on new tariffs for most countries, it has chosen to up the ante on its China trade restrictions, raising duties on Chinese goods to 125 per cent.

The face-off continues with China filing both a lawsuit and a complaint with the World Trade Organization, with a Chinese Ministry of Commerce spokesperson expressing China’s intention to “firmly safeguard its legitimate rights and interests in accordance with the WTO rules, and resolutely uphold the multilateral trading system and the international economic and trade order, according to the spokesperson”.

According to an April 9 news report on China’s financial news platform, Yicai, tourism practitioners in China said the issuance of tourist visas for US travel would be tightened, and a significant decline in Chinese outbound travellers to the US could be expected.

Travel sentiments among the Chinese with regards to destination US have been comparatively weaker than pre-pandemic years. More than 4.4 million Chinese visited the US in 2019, according to China Trading Desk’s Fourth Quarter China Outbound Travel Sentiment Survey, but only 439,00 visited the country in 2024.

The survey involved 11,000 participants.

In a January 17 statement issued alongside findings from the survey, China Trading Desk founder Subramania Bhatt had said: “In the Chinese press and on social media, the image of the US is increasingly negative. Reports of mass shootings and videos of city streets overrun by homeless people have played a factor in keeping Chinese travel to the US low. Geopolitical tensions, the high cost of travel to the US, and the unfavourable exchange rate haven’t helped either.”

When asked how the US-China tariff fight and China’s US travel alert would impact Chinese travel business, Check-in Asia CEO and travel economist Gary Bowerman told TTG Asia: “Travel agencies may be concerned by the deliberate reference in the travel advisory to ‘the domestic security situation in the US’. Safety and security concerns are a vital consideration for this part of the travel market.”

He added: “Overall, I think we need to wait and see – the Chinese travel market to the US is quite diversified. Some segments may be deterred by the strength of the wording in the travel advisory, others less so or not at all. Chinese FITs are independent thinkers and will weigh up the potential risks as they see them and make their own travel decisions. Safety is a factor, but there are other factors, too.”

He said the upcoming summer school holiday would provide “a clearer barometer of how Chinese family travellers are feeling about the US this year”.

“A significant proportion of Chinese travel to the US isn’t only for leisure – it’s to visit family and friends who live, study and work there, and VFR is less likely to be affected than pure leisure travel,” he remarked.

Bowerman will discuss the Impact of Trump’s tariffs on ASEAN and Asia-Pacific in a two-part series on his podcast, The South East Asia Travel Show. The first part [https://asiatravelreset.substack.com/p/issue-181-the-impact-of-trumps-tariffs] was published on April 9, and can be accessed on Spotify and Apple Podcast.

Meanwhile, during a virtual media conference yesterday, WTTC’s CEO Julia Simpson, addressed questions on how the trade war and resulting economic impact could influence China’s status as a travel and tourism powerhouse.

She said: “The trouble with trade wars is that all the cards get thrown into the air and you don’t quite know how or where they are going to land. All I will say is, I admire China for being able to take a long-term view of the world. So, I am still predicting that the Chinese travel and tourism market will eventually overtake the US as the prize owners of being the biggest travel and tourism market.”

Simpson added that the Chinese government has always been supportive of economic and tourism growth.