WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump disparaged Canadians as a bunch of trade cheaters and mercilessly mocked Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as “very dishonest and weak” when the two countries were in the throes of difficult trade negotiations.

But Trump’s views – and his tone – seemed to change the minute the two sides struck a new deal.

The U.S. has “a great relationship with Canada – I think now it'll be better than ever,” Trump boasted last month at a Rose Garden ceremony celebrating the new trade pact. Trudeau, he said, is “a good person who is doing a good job.”

So the latest U.S.-Canadian rift is officially over and all is now forgiven, eh?

“Oh, no, no, no, no,” said writer Stephen Marche of Toronto. “Very much no.”

For many Canadians, it’s definitely not over. And it won’t be for a long time, if ever.

Canadians see Trump’s attitude toward them as demeaning and his behavior as bully-ish, prompting calls to boycott American products and leaving a trail of resentment stretching from Sherbrooke to Saskatoon and points beyond.

“He insulted the entire country,” said Martha Hall Findlay of Calgary, referring to the U.S.’s decision in June to slap hefty tariffs on aluminum and steel imported from Canada, Mexico and the European Union.

Canadians regarded the tariffs as a personal affront by a country they’d long considered the closest of friends. But what incensed them even more was the Trump administration’s rationale that the duties were necessary because aluminum and steel imports posed a threat to U.S. national security.

“Really? Canada as a threat to national security?” said Findlay, president and chief executive officer of the Canada West Foundation, a public policy think tank. “Extraordinary. And indeed insulting.”

Canadians are baffled by the current political climate in the U.S., where trash-talking your friends and bending the truth are now routine in the era of “Make America Great Again.”

“It’s like watching your dad drink himself to death,” Marche said. “You want to get away from it. But can you?”

It’s really not even a question of resentment or hard feelings, said Marche, a novelist and essayist who often writes for American publications.

“It’s more a question of like what do we do about the fact America is losing its mind and how are we going to react to that insanity?” he said.

Trump is far from the first U.S. president to spar with Canadians and their leader.

An angry Lyndon Johnson reportedly grabbed Prime Minister Lester Pearson by the lapels and accused him of urinating “on my rug” when Pearson questioned U.S. involvement in Vietnam. (Johnson chose a more colorful synonym for tinkling.) Richard Nixon once branded Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, Justin Trudeau’s father, as a “pompous egghead” and called him a vulgar name. “I’ve been called worse things by better people,” Trudeau shot back.

“There have been many times in the past where leaders haven’t gotten along, but I think this is different,” said Laura Dawson, who was born and raised in Ontario and now works in Washington as director of the Wilson Center’s Canada Institute.

Dawson said she has been fielding phone calls from relatives asking incredulously, “What are you doing living in that place? Come home immediately. It’s just getting worse.”

A survey taken last year showed the depths of the Canadians’ disdain for Trump and how their views of the U.S. have grown worse since he took office. Just 44 percent of Canadians indicated they had a favorable view of their southern neighbor, down from 65 percent before Trump moved into the White House.

“It was the lowest we had recorded in 35 years,” said Keith Neuman, executive director of the Toronto-based Environics Institute for Survey Research.

Asked which countries stand out as a negative force in the world, nearly six in 10 Canadians cited the United States – more than any other country, including North Korea, Iran and Saudi Arabia. One in four Canadians reported changing or reconsidering plans to travel to the U.S. because of the current political climate.

The Trudeau government has tried to downplay the notion of strained relations between the two countries, choosing instead to emphasize the neighbors’ economic, historic and cultural ties and arguing that trade negotiations by their very nature produce moments of drama and difficulty.

“Since day one of these negotiations, we said that what we wanted was a good deal for Canada,” said Adam Austen, spokesman for Minister of Foreign Affairs Chrystia Freeland, Canada’s lead negotiator in the trade talks.

“We held out for that good deal, and that is what we got,” Austen said.

The new United States-Mexico-Canada-Agreement, announced Sept. 30, includes new rules for the movement of products between the U.S., Canada and Mexico and will replace the nearly quarter-century-old North American Free Trade Agreement.

Now that the negotiations are over, the governments of both countries will go back to working with each other out of necessity, and businesses on each side of the border will likely continue to view each other as attractive trading partners going forward, said Bruce Heyman, who served as U.S. ambassador to Canada under President Barack Obama.

But for other Canadians, “I think there are a lot of very sore feelings that will take a lot longer than the signing of this agreement to heal,” Heyman said.

“There are a lot of people who are really wounded because they view the U.S. as a best friend,” he said. “And the treatment that the president and (his) team had with Canada was not as you would treat a friend. They treated them as just another transactional relationship.”

Marche said one thing that became crystal clear during the trade discussions is that Canada must pivot away from the U.S. as much as possible and as soon as possible.

“I do not think it will all be forgotten when Trump is out of office,” Marche said. “Just the knowledge that America can be so casually cruel to its longest-standing ally – and I would say a pretty decent friend – it’s like, we need to get out of this. We need to get out from under these people’s thumbs as much as we possibly can.”

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