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The Gordie Howe Bridge Is What American Betrayal Looks Like

Canada spent billions on the crossing. Trump turned it into a shakedown

As a symbol of Canada’s relationship with the United States, it’s a bit too on the nose. Linking Windsor with Detroit and named after a Canadian hockey legend who played for an American team, the Gordie Howe International Bridge sat empty for months, completed and useless, after Washington threatened to block the opening, then huffily cancelled the ceremony in June of this year.

Today, the bridge—all 2.5 kilometres of its soaring cable-stayed deck—is finally open for business. That the bridge is doing what it was built to do is a good thing. The structure will handle a substantial share of Canada’s busiest commercial gateway. Billions of dollars worth of cars, auto parts, machinery, food, pharmaceuticals, and other sundry goods will traverse each year, along with friends, families, tourists, and business travellers. But the whole sorry episode is a reminder of the extent to which Donald Trump has built a bullying, sinister plutocracy that has utterly captured American economic and political life—and some of Canada’s too.

The story of what should have been a triumph of continental integration goes something like this. To ease travel times and facilitate trade, Canada agreed in 2012 to pony up the cash—ultimately $6.4 billion—to construct a new bridge and then earn that money back through tolls. It would be owned jointly between the Government of Canada and the state of Michigan, with the former recouping costs for the capital outlay before splitting revenues with the state. This was, and it can’t be repeated enough, an unusually generous arrangement.

Then, in February, Trump made his opening demand: a 50 percent ownership stake as the price for allowing the first vehicle through. One ostensible justification for the last-minute renegotiation was his desire to, as per the CBC, rectify “longstanding unfair trade practices.” It was nothing more than a shakedown.

Well, there might have been something more. Allegations of political interference cite the influence of the billionaire Moroun family, one of whom—Matthew Moroun—owns the aging Ambassador Bridge also linking the two cities. The Morouns have long opposed the Gordie Howe Bridge, which would rival their own and, presumably, reduce traffic........

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