American tourists and visitors have been largely driving the robust and stable growth of service exports to the United States from Portugal over the past two years.
A staggering three million expected visitors from the US for holidays, business, and increasingly relocation in 2025 has been an important component of Portugal’s growth in GDP in 2025, fuelling growth above virtually all of Portugal’s peers in the eurozone.
The numbers were reiterated at this year’s American Chamber of Commerce in Portugal (AmCham Portugal) ‘Transatlantic Business Summit’, which took place against the backdrop of an important milestone – the 75th anniversary of AmCham Portugal.
The summit at the Gulbenkian Foundation last Friday was also held in the 250th anniversary year of the founding of the United States of America when, legend has it, the Declaration of Independence was signed and toasted with glasses of Madeira wine.
A focus on business
In his opening remarks, the President of AmCham Portugal, António Martins da Costa, stressed that AmCham’s focus were “companies and people whose lives were shaped by all that happens in the world of business.”
AmCham Portugal, he said, was founded by a group of American entrepreneurs who had wanted “to set up in Portugal and bring American investment” to the country.
Over time, things changed to take into account a two-way trade with Portuguese exports and investment in the US.
Today, AmCham is built on three fundamental pillars: networking, advocacy and services. And from a handful of entrepreneurs back in the 1950s, today AmCham Portugal has around 300 corporate members, making it one of the largest chambers of commerce in the country.
And trade and investment between the two countries have grown from a few tens of millions of dollars in 1951 to €15 billion+ in 2024 (final data for 2025 has still not been released) – €11 billion in Portuguese exports to the United States and €4.9 billion of imports from the United States to Portugal.
The United States is now Portugal’s fourth biggest exports market, although in the case of imports, Portugal imports more goods (60%) and 40% services.
And the stock of US Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in Portugal in which the US is the final counterparty was €11.5 billion at the end of 2024 – a figure that has remained fairly constant and growing for a considerable number of years.
US third source of visitors to Portugal
The United States is now Portugal’s third source of visitors and tourists with 2.3 million coming to Portugal for holidays, business or because they relocated to Portugal.
And although the final figures are not in, 2025 is expected to show a growth in US visitors of around 4%, meaning close to three million.
António Martins da Costa said there had been some changes in terms of commerce, with a fall in exports of goods from Portugal to the US of 12.5% (which might have to do with US import tariffs on EU countries).
The export of services is still growing since Portuguese services exported to the US are essentially tourism and is directly linked to the growing number of US visitors to the country.
Source: Essential Business – read full report here.
