WASHINGTON (TNS) — Can this marriage be saved?

Relations between Canada and President Donald Trump were icy before Trump boosted U.S. tariffs on a tranche of Canadian imports to 25% in February. Then, on Friday, Trump raised that rate to 35% for goods not covered under the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement.

“It feels like we’re in the midst of a divorce,” Jamie Tronnes, executive director of the Center for North American Prosperity and Security, told me.

Two parents have been letting things fester without going to counseling, Tronnes offered, and one spouse is feeling pretty miffed.

Folks in O Canada don’t like it when an American president says he wants to turn their beloved homeland into America’s 51st state. Likewise when Trump referred to former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as “Gov. Trudeau.”

It’s also a marriage in which one spouse appears not to understand how much he’s ticked off the other spouse.

In May, when Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney visited Trump in the White House, the president said annexation would make for “a wonderful marriage.”

Carney responded that his country is “not for sale.”

Some Trump fans may see the president’s rhetoric as innocent ribbing, the sort of kerfuffle that Trump can repair with one of his famous charm offensives.

Tronnes, an Alberta native now living in the USA, countered, “Canadians are really upset.”

Talk about a love-hate relationship.

Last month Pew Research reported that 55% of Canadians see the U.S. as the country’s greatest ally, yet 59% see America as Canada’s greatest threat.

In 2019, 20% of Canadians viewed the U.S. as a threat. Trump’s trolling of our neighbor to the north is poisoning a long-standing alliance.

This is not good news for tourist destinations, like my newspaper’s home of Las Vegas.

As the Review-Journal reported, in the year that ended in May, the number of Air Canada passengers arriving at Harry Reid International Airport declined 21.7%, while WestJet fell 34.6%.

Trump likes to boast about his “no taxes on tips” initiative, but what happens when there are fewer tips?

Sean Speer, who served as an adviser to former conservative Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, recalls how then-President Ronald Reagan crafted a free trade agreement with Canada that “set in motion this era of globalized free trade and exchange.” Speer finds it extraordinary that now, a Republican president is poised to bring the era of free trade to an end.

“The protesters at Seattle, Genoa and Toronto” who clashed with authorities to protest globalization “kind of like, ultimately won,” Speer noted, thanks to Trump.

Speer sees affected Canadian businesses adapting. Some exporters who already were compliant didn’t fill out the paperwork. Now they will, he said.

As for Carney, he has put himself in an unenviable position. He can’t win.

“Carney’s base is super amped up” with anti-Trumpism and anti-Americanism, Speer told me. “Carney has got this awful kind of political conundrum, where, on the one hand, if he does’t get a deal, he’s going to preside over a contracting economy. On the other hand, to get a deal, he’s probably going to have to make a series of concessions that will cause him real pain with his own voters.”

To think that you could thumb your nose at Trump, Speer added, was “fanciful.”

(Contact Review-Journal Washington columnist Debra J. Saunders at dsaunders@reviewjournal.com.)