O Canada, won’t you please come back?

We apologize: Our president’s a quack.

With a significant assist from President Donald Trump, Las Vegas currently finds itself in a place many thought impossible — on Canada’s bad side.

The much-publicized boycott of Las Vegas by Canadian tourists in recent months in response to Trump’s tough tariff talk and other insults has become a pop culture metaphor for the malicious havoc his reckless economic policies are wreaking on the nation at large. It’s also exposing something about the long-term health of Las Vegas in the megaresort era.

Trump’s authoritarian bullying on everything from immigrants to talk-show comedians continues to mar the great American brand. Business-friendly? Not so much. Good to our neighbors? Not anymore. Tough on tyrants? Don’t make me laugh.

But Canadians and comedians, look out, there’s a new sheriff in town.

It’s little wonder the self-styled marketing maven in the White House managed to bankrupt his Atlantic City casinos half a dozen times. Trump continues to reveal himself as a thin-skinned narcissist obsessed with perceived enemies foreign and domestic. When the commander in chief of the most powerful nation in the world is reduced to going after Jimmy Kimmel, it’s time to call in the professionals in the white coats.

The precipitous drop in Canadian tourism — 33 percent in June — has been widely reported and endlessly analyzed. Canada represents the largest segment of the international travel market to Las Vegas. In 2024, that amounted to almost 1.5 million people. Presumably, many of those folks have now found other places to spread their sunny dispositions and colorful money.

The economic impact on the local economy is hard to overstate. Canadians pumped $3.6 billion into the Southern Nevada economy and supported more than 43,000 jobs, notes UNLV economics professor Stephen Miller. When Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV) joined a bipartisan delegation to Ottawa in July to make nice with Prime Minister Mark Carney following Trump’s blustering insults about making Canada the 51st state, it was a reminder of what’s at stake. It’s hard enough to do business in a competitive marketplace when the president is bent on driving away customers.

The passenger decline isn’t limited to Canada, of course. International travel continues to falter so much it’s roused the hard-to-rattle marketers at the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Bureau to craft a charm offensive in an effort to win back customers.

Cue Las Vegas Mayor Shelley Berkley. With a flair we’ve come to appreciate from the former Strip cocktail waitress and congresswoman, Berkley has used her bully pulpit to carefully address what she calls the “convergence of events right now” that are having a considerable impact on the Las Vegas economy, turning the Canadian customer base “from a faucet to a drip.” 

“Same thing in Mexico,” Berkley added in a moment of understatement. “We have a number of very high rollers that come in from Mexico that aren’t so keen on coming in right now.”

Not with the Trump administration’s ongoing vilification of one of our biggest trading partners, they aren’t.

She saved the biggest bouquets for those nice folks from up north who don’t visit as much these days.

“We love the Canadians, and we want them to come back and enjoy Las Vegas and everything we have to offer,” she told reporters, perhaps declining the urge to go on bended knee to illustrate her point. “And so, as mayor of Las Vegas, I’m telling everyone in Canada, ‘Please come. We love you, we need you, and we miss you.’”

Of course, blaming the bully-in-chief as he continues to break the dishes of our economy and democracy like a petulant authoritarian only goes so far. Some of the problems facing Las Vegas are self-inflicted and have nothing to do with whether the Canadians flock south to the casinos, restaurants and shows. The community’s gaming executives need only look into their corporate carnival mirror to find who also has played a role in the Las Vegas slide.

Seizing the moment that finds the casino titans rethinking their marketing strategy and room rates, Berkley did something almost unheard of from a Nevada elected official. She scolded the gaming industry for “nickel-and-diming people.” In doing so, she did them a favor by shining a flashlight of reality on the corporate business model that thinks it’s smart to squeeze every ounce of potential profit from every corner of the property. Frankly, it’s a good way to alienate good customers.

“If you have to pay $70 for valet parking, you’re going to find out pretty quickly that people don’t want to pay $70 for parking,” Berkley said.

Does this mean Las Vegas has seen the error of its ways and learned its lesson about squeezing its loyal customers? I don’t think so. At least for now, though, the people in power are paying attention.

Who knows, maybe one of them will find the courage to give hometown hero Jimmy Kimmel a Las Vegas residency. I hear the poor guy can use the work.

John L. Smith is an author and longtime columnist. He was born in Henderson and his family’s Nevada roots go back to 1881. His stories have appeared in New Lines, Time, Reader’s Digest, Rolling Stone, The Daily Beast, Reuters and Desert Companion, among others.