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Yeah, tell that to the bar owners, hotel proprietors and restaurateurs who’ve watched their clientele shrink in the past month.

I am here but I’m conflicted about it.

With Canada and the United States at tariffs and knives drawn, President Donald Trump repeatedly urging my country to become the 51st state, and now inveighing against the validity of an “artificially drawn line’’ separating the neighbour nations, it feels right to avoid America like the plague.

A plague of locusts, including the likes of DeSantis and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, two former opponents of Trump as Republican presidential nominees. “Little’’ Marco, as Trump always insultingly called him. “Meatball’’ as he called DeSantis. Yet both — along with just about every GOP pol — have fallen in genuflective thrall.

Rubio has just wrapped up a G7 confab in Quebec, where earlier in the week he was welcomed on the tiniest of red carpets, barely extending beyond the airplane’s stairs. Sometimes hoser-y can be subtle. In any event, Rubio told reporters that the annexation of Canada wouldn’t be up for debate. “It’s not a meeting about how we’re going to take over Canada.’’

Chief U.S. diplomat, Rubio has also assured that Trump was not considering “the use of military force’’ for the annexation of Canada. Gee, how comforting.

He continues, however, to stalwartly defend his president’s chaotic tariff warfare with Canada, with Mexico, with the European Union, with China. In an interview a few weeks ago, doubling down on the cockamamie tariff wrangle against Canada — testament to the Madness of King Donald — Rubio attempted to frame the trade imbalance as Cold War leftovers.

“You know why we did it? We did it because we felt like we wanted countries to be strong economically, even if it meant they’re cheating, because we don’t want them to fall victim to some internal Marxist coup that overturned their government, or whatever.’’

There are barbarian Marxists at the gate in Canada? The NDP can’t even get themselves elected to power nationally.

In a down ‘n’ dirty trade war that has galvanized Canadians — elbows up, Gordie Howe style — with American liquor removed from LCBO shelves and customers carefully examining items at the supermarket to ensure they didn’t originate in the U. S. of A., it is certainly prudent to stay on our side of the 49th parallel. Why pump tourist money into the American economy, when Trump grows ever more threatening and vulgarian and hateful toward us? Though much of his not-very-funny sarcasm was directed at “Gov. Trudeau,’’ and he doesn’t have Justin to kick around anymore.

Travel agencies and tourism-boosters are mighty displeased about plummeting tourism — particularly, at this time of year, snowbirds  suddenly giving America a wide berth. Mexico and the Caribbean are preferred fly-away destinations, while many are opting to see Canada. And I can think of a hundred places I’d rather be than Florida.

But it’s the job, see? Needs must. The Blue Jays have been coming to Dunedin for 49 years. Until they move spring training to, say, the Dominican Republic, baseball correspondents are required to follow the fleet here. Even if most newspapers, in financial straits, don’t have the budget for travel anymore.

Maybe the Jays can slap a tariff on American ballplayers. Can people be tariffed? Of course, Trump would then take vindictive aim at the 42 per cent of Canadian players in the NHL. Seattle Kraken are 48 per cent Canadian.

The eye test tells me that Canadians are still attending Grapefruit League games at TD Ballpark, though the crowds look smaller than years past. But of course a whole lot of seniors have winter homes in Florida or long-standing motel arrangements. I could find no stats for incoming Canadians.

But this is spring break week and the main drag in Clearwater Beach — usually jammed with thousands of carousing college students — is weirdly quiet, almost no flashing of butt-cheeks by thong-wearing teen girls or chest-baring young men. A handful of bars, like my local hangout, Coco’s, are doing bustling evening business, but that’s mostly because many watering holes damaged by Hurricane Milton (and two earlier hurricanes last year) remain shuttered.

Maybe Americans are already feeling the pinch too, or leery about the cost of everything skyrocketing because of tit-for-tat tariffs. Certainly voters have given their elected Republicans an earful at town hall meetings because this is not what they voted for, including many of those who cast their ballot for Trump.

An administration which, by the way, on Thursday slashed 31 protections against air and water pollution. And that is an issue close to Florida’s heart. Last month a swath of red tide formed along the peninsula’s southwest coast, from Tampa Bay to Key West. Florida is all about the beaches — and the cheesy strip malls — but the Karenia brevis organism is a genuine threat: an algal bloom that produces powerful toxins that kill marine life, birds and are harmful to humans, especially those with respiratory problems.

Yet sitting on the patio of a beachside bar, watching the sun sink over the gulf’s horizon, all the trials and tribulations of Trump World feel far away.

That’s the GULF OF MEXICO, people.