On Wednesday, Gov. Kelly Ayotte said New Hampshire has “open arms” for visitors from Canada. The data suggests that gesture hasn’t been enough to persuade them to cross the border.

New Hampshire business officials say tourism from Canada is down roughly 30% amid rising tension between the Trump administration and Canadian government.

“Absolutely the Canadian numbers are lower,” Taylor Caswell, commissioner of the state’s Department of Business and Economic Affairs, told the Governor and Executive Council during a meeting in the border town of Pittsburg last month. “I mean, they’re running at about 30% underneath what we’ve seen in prior years.”

Though the commissioner couldn’t say for sure what’s driving this decrease, he floated the strained relations between the U.S. and Canada as a p

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