Strolling in bright sunshine across the immaculately raked gravel of Paris's Tuileries gardens, Barbara and Rick Wilson from The Dalles, Oregon, were not exactly in disguise. But earlier that morning, on their very first trip to France, Rick, 74, had taken an unusual precaution.

Before leaving his hotel, he'd taken a small piece of black tape and covered up the Stars and Stripes flag on the corner of his baseball cap.

"We're sick about it. It's horrible. Just horrible," said Rick, as he and his wife contemplated the sudden sense of shame and embarrassment they said they now felt, as Americans, following President Trump's abrupt moves on global trading tariffs.

Barbara, 70, even had a Canadian lapel pin in her pocket – a gift from another tourist - which she thought might come in useful if further subterfuge proved necessary.

"I'm disappointed in our country. We are upset about the tariffs," she explained.

A few yards away, towards the crowds gathering outside the Louvre Museum, another American couple was also trying to keep a lower profile than usual. Chris Epps, 56, an attorney from New York, had decided he would dress a little differently on today's tour.

"No New York Yankees hat. I left it in the hotel. People might come up to us, treat us differently. But so far, so good," he added.

As the world grapples with the implications of Donald Trump's see-sawing quest to upend the global trading system, the impacts are being felt not just on stock markets and businesses and investment funds, but in subtler ways too, and not least here in France, a country that continues to attract vast numbers of tourists from North America, and which has a centuries-old, close, and sometimes testy relationship with the United States.

To be clear, there are no indications that Americans are any less welcome here than before. Our interviews with a random selection of tourists were also carried out shortly before President Trump reversed some of his tariffs.

Nonetheless, the shock and anger generated in Europe by events of the........

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