Your state lives and dies by foreign tourism and your biggest tourists are boycotting you. What do you do?

If you are Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, you kick them when they are down and hope they take it.

The idea is hilarious and very short-sighted:

Florida voters are weighing whether to scrap residential property taxes and the state’s governor has a solution to that potentially huge revenue loss: tax Canadians more.

Canadians who own property in Florida describe the threats to shake them down for more money as just the latest insult in a series of them since U.S. President Donald Trump returned to power last year with a decidedly anti-Canada agenda.

Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis has railed against property taxes, which fund local governments and the services they provide — law enforcement, fire, EMS, disaster preparation and mosquito control, among many others — equating them to a form of modern-day feudalism where homeowners must “pony up money to the government just for the courtesy of using your own property.”

To end this, DeSantis is pushing Amendment 3, a ballot measure crafted by his Republican statehouse allies that will be put to voters in the midterm election next month.

If passed, Florida “homesteaders,” as permanent residents are called, will see a dramatic increase in an existing property tax exemption.

So tax Canadians. They’ll just sell their Florida trailers are find another warm climate in the winter.

It is not as if Florida is the only game in town.

And other countries will see an opportunity and woo them.

Besides, snowbirds tend to be much older, and they also tend to be the Bank of Mom and Dad. Add more taxes, and they’ll shed the Florida home and not look back.

The Republicans are under some impression that Canadians are an easier group to fleece and pick on, and yet, every time they do, it blows up in their faces.

But for Florida, every gas station, restaurant, store, hotel, pharmacy, attraction, gallery, and mall lives and dies from tourism. Pushing out your biggest customers is going to do nothing but make homesteaders less able to carry their mortgage, making paying property tax a moot point. But the governor is a himbo, and I would expect nothing else.