CANADA LOOKS TO CULTIVATE NEW TRADE RELATIONSHIPS

television routine was predicated on this benign ignorance — but that was largely accepted as proof of a relationship so strong that it could be taken for granted.

Despite being a country of just 36 million, Canada is the biggest source of international travelers to the United States, its closest military ally and the biggest importer of U.S. goods.

Many Canadians, who touted their relationship with Americans as the most successful partnership in the world, feel that the special bond is gone — or at least frayed.

“We think we understand the United States, or thought we did,” said Janice Stein, the founding director of the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs. “That relationship is gone.”

Bill Anderson, the director of the University of Windsor’s Cross-border Institute, a research organization across the river from Detroit, said there was still hope relations could be repaired eventually.

“There’s a kind of disappointment, but most people expect things to get better,” he said. “Down here on the border, the bond is more personal than political.”

The erosion began in May, when Trump announced he was expanding tariffs on steel and aluminum to include Canada, hurdling the trade agreement by claiming that imported metals threatened national security by degrading America’s industrial base. Canada is the biggest exporter of steel and aluminum to the United States.

“It’s impossible to explain to Americans how insulted Canadians were by that,” Stein said. “How, by any stretch of the imagination, could we be a security threat to the U.S.?”

At the end of this summer’s two-day Group of 7 summit in Charlevoix, Quebec, with Trudeau as host, Trump erupted in a fury that many Canadians found not just shocking, but inexplicable.

After Trudeau said Canada would not be bullied on trade, Trump dropped tweets like bombs from Air Force One, on his way to meet North Korea’s leader. He called Trudeau “very dishonest and weak” and accused him of “making false statements.”

The next day, the president’s top trade and economic advisers piled on. Peter Navarro said there was “a special place in hell” for Trudeau, and Larry Kudlow said he “stabbed us in the back.” Navarro later apologized.

Throughout the negotiations, Trump put Canadian dairy farmers in the crosshairs of his Twitter assaults. He scoffed at Canada’s military commitment to American wars, at one point retorting “Didn’t you guys burn down the White House?”

(No, Canadians did not. The War of 1812 was in fact between the United States and Britain, as Canada was still more than 50 years away from becoming a country.)

Then, in August, he announced a deal with Mexico on NAFTA and suggested that Canada might no longer be included. He threatened to hit Canada’s auto exports with a hefty 25 percent tariff if it did not “negotiate fairly.”

In the days before signing the deal, Trump announced he had purposely snubbed Trudeau by refusing to meet with him at the United Nations and declared that he did not like Canada’s trade representative — presumably Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland — “very much.” (Trudeau’s office said no request for a meeting was ever made.)

“That type of language was extremely offensive,” Anderson said. “That’s going to stick with people.”

The latest Pew Research poll reflects just that.

Only 39 percent of Canadians polled said they had a favorable view of the United States — the lowest number since Pew began polling Canadians in 2002.

For many Canadians, the worst part was seeing that Trump’s sentiments had the support of many Americans. Stein noted the latest Gallup poll, which showed Trump’s job approval rating at 42 percent.

“It’s really a deep shock for Canadians,” she said. “We need now to use the time the agreement provides us — 16 years — to adjust, to diversify our trade beyond the United States.”

“We have to invest more effort and resources in the rest of the G7 — independent of what the United States says — in Germany and France and Japan,” Stein continued. “It would be highly irresponsible not to after this.”