It breaks my heart to end a cherished friendship, but Donald Trump has left me no choice.

As a Canadian, I’m reeling from the unraveling of a relationship I once believed to be unshakeable — a bond between our two nations that felt secure and enduring. It’s not just me — many Canadians are feeling this way.

Since Trump took office for his second term as president, I’ve felt a betrayal I never anticipated. The trade war he ignited between Canada and the U.S. threatens to hamstring my country with tariffs so high that not only will prices soar on both sides of the border, but, according to one official, up to a million Canadian jobs could vanish.

Any close union — whether between couples or friends or countries — goes through moments of strain. But this? This feels like a public flogging. The love is gone. Trump destroyed it and now rubs his cruelty and ignorance in our faces with every new threat of a tariff.

Trump wants us to pay — dearly — for something we didn’t even do. He says his tariffs are justified, payback for Canada allowing “fentanyl to come into our country at levels never seen before, killing hundreds of thousands of our citizens.” It’s a flat-out lie. A sucker-punch rooted in a crude calculation: wreck our economy, and then steal our sovereignty.

His threat to make Canada the 51st state might be laughable if it weren’t so chilling. But the most painful part? His claim that America doesn’t need us — for anything — and that we’ve been nothing but abusive toward our southern neighbor. Abusive? Excuse me?!

He’s completely gaslighting us — and the American people — by twisting facts to fit his absurd narrative and attempting to erase our shared history to gain power and control.

As Prime Minister — not governor — Justin Trudeau recently noted, “We don’t want this.” We’re Canadian — polite, considerate, maddeningly the first to apologize. But right now, I don’t know a single Canadian saying, “I’m sorry.” Trump’s vicious, catastrophic, and destructive words and actions maim. My head is still spinning from how quickly he’s upended what always seemed like a stable, reliable friendship. But one thing is crystal clear: I won’t be visiting the United States anytime soon.

And that’s painful to say. I have family in Boston, Hartford, Connecticut, and New York City. No summer has been complete without a road trip through Vermont’s rolling hills, Massachusetts’ idyllic countryside, and on to South Tamworth, New Hampshire, where I visit my aunt, uncle and cousins on Mountain Road.

I also have friends scattered across various other states. Most Canadians do. And I’ve always felt a rush of joy from being in their cities. Forty-eight hours in the U.S. felt like a vacation much further abroad — minus the stressful logistics. I can take off from Toronto’s island airport on a Saturday morning and land in downtown Manhattan by lunch.

I’ve been traveling with my three sisters on girls’ weekends to places like Chicago, Boston, San Diego and New York City for what feels like forever. One perfect, warm day last summer, as we wove through the electric frenzy of Times Square, my oldest and wisest sister turned to me.

“This might be our last visit for a long time,” she said. “If Trump wins, that’s it.”

“He’ll never win,” I replied, fully in denial that Trump was well-positioned to beat Kamala Harris despite all his mounting legal entanglements — not to mention recent convictions. I couldn’t imagine letting one man keep me from visiting some of my favorite cities. Even a weak currency never stopped us before. With the abysmal exchange rate of 65 Canadian cents to one U.S. dollar, we crossed the border and happily spent. Our mantra was, Just don’t do the math. We pretended we were on par. We always felt we were — at least when it came to supporting each other.

But Trump isn’t just any man. He stands for everything I’m against. As the daughter of immigrants, a proponent of diversity, equity and inclusion, and a believer that trans rights must be protected, it was already hard to neatly box up my outrage and ignore it. But now that Trump’s reach has extended beyond American soil, Canadians like me aren’t feeling so friendly anymore. We’re insulted and angry. We’re turning our backs on our favorite California Chardonnay. We’re swearing off cross-border shopping as if we were cutting ties with a narcissistic ex. Some snowbirds, who once flocked to Florida and Arizona to escape Canada’s long, punishing winters, are staying put this year. We’re taking care of our own and embracing the mantra of “buy Canadian, bye America.” Our gloves are off.

The day the tariffs went into effect I panicked, remembering we were planning to replace four large windows in our house.

“I guess it’s too late to order windows?” I texted my husband. “I’m just connecting the dots now!”

“My friend, Joe, gave me the name of his window guy,” he wrote back. “100% made in Canada.”

Even though Trump has now paused tariffs on some products until April, we’re still not about to spend a nickel to prop up the U.S. economy when its president has pledged to destroy ours. We don’t want to be doing any of this, and we know so many Americans who also wish none of this were happening. But this is our reality now.

As we wait to see how this trade war plays out with non-neighborly tariffs on both sides of the divide, my stomach is a tight knot. With Trump in charge, I know we can’t expect a reasoned, coherent discussion. What I’m certain we can count on, however, are more outrageous, reckless and self-serving lies. We are bracing ourselves, but with Trump, it’s impossible to know what we’re bracing for.

Our countries’ alliance has been built on a history of trust. Trust is something you do — not say. It’s always felt like we’ve been in this together — we’ve fought wars side by side and been there during each other’s times of need. But Trump has demolished that trust, and we’ve become adversaries instead of allies.

“They need to feel the pain. They want to come at us hard, we’re going to come back twice as hard,” as one Canadian government official recently said. It wasn’t very Canadian-like, but here we are.

America, I hope to see you again. I’d love to meander down the Miracle Mile, breathe in the energy of 5th Avenue, and stroll Newbury Street. But not now. I’m not ready to cross that border just yet, and I don’t think you are, either. We both need space — time to get through this, each in our own way. For now, I’m counting down the days until 2029, when I hope someone who understands and respects the power and potential of our once beautiful relationship becomes president and ends this nightmare. Until then, take care, my old friend.

Angela Yazbek is a first-generation Arab-Canadian writer and former CBC-TV journalist based in Toronto. Her essays have appeared in Newsweek and The Globe and Mail. She is currently querying her debut memoir, “Collapsed: A Life Broken Open,” which breaks the silence often expected in Arab culture, revealing the isolated and often brutal struggle for belonging that many children of immigrants experience.

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