Carney trumps Trump with Gordie Howe bridge deal

The dispute over the opening of the Gordie Howe Bridge was always and only going to end when U.S. President Donald Trump could declare he had got the better deal.

Even when he didn’t.

Trump gleefully posted on social media Saturday that after refusing to allow the completed bridge between Windsor and Detroit to open in late June, he got a “MUCH BETTER DEAL” from Prime Minister Mark Carney. Political opponents and a handful of opinion writers rushed to shake their heads at how Carney was used and abused by the big fella in Washington.

It’s not surprising that Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre would do an end-zone dance as he lamented Carney’s “terrible deal; the leader of the official Opposition’s default setting is “condemn.”

But for opinion writers and other analysts, the rush to condemn was a bit rash.

Under the terms of the original 2012 agreement, forged by the government of then Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper, Canada remarkably agreed to pay the entire $6.4-billion cost of building the new bridge. In exchange, the Harper government ensured Canada would receive all future toll revenue.

Short-term, maybe a bad deal for Canada; but long-term, when you considered the positive impact it would have on cross-border commerce, it was a fiscal win.

That deal, however, was jeopardized when Trump intervened and delayed the opening of the bridge. He demanded that Canada pay compensation to the private American owners of the venerable Ambassador Bridge, a family that not-so-coincidentally has donated to Trump causes.

The deal that Trump eventually agreed to seemed to be an upgrade on the original 2012 deal: Canada would keep 50 per cent of the net profits from the bridge over the first 15 years of operation; the other 50 per cent would go into a vaguely defined “economic development fund” that would be invested on the U.S. side.

Is this a better deal for the U.S.? In some senses, yes, but only if you ignore the differences between gross and net revenues, something that many critics seem to have done.

The deal that Trump claimed was “MUCH BETTER” still allows Canada to take operating and debt maintenance costs off the top of gross toll revenues. Given that those are significant, there will be very little “net” profit left to share with the U.S. In reality, Canada gave away 50 per cent of what might add up to nearly nothing over the 15 years outlined in the agreement.

“We are sharing after Canada is paid back, so we get the revenues,” Carney said. “Then the servicing of the costs of the bridge and paying the debt of the bridge, and then what’s left over, there’s a split of that for 15 years.”

This is the reality of dispute resolution with the Trump administration: getting what we want but doing it in a way that gives the wacky, volatile and irrational president some sort of moral victory to parade on social media.

That is, of course, a completely mad approach for ironing out disputes with the U.S. Then again, we’re facing off against a completely mad leader who does not acknowledge the need to be fair or remotely logical.

Trump’s refusal to allow the Gordie Howe to open to traffic between Detroit and Windsor was among the most needlessly retributive gestures Trump has made towards Canada. And that’s saying something given the way he has tried to cripple our economy with tariffs and has taunted Canadians with threats of making us the 51st state.

However, it appears the Carney government was fuelled by the reality that businesses on both sides of the border desperately wanted an alternative to the Ambassador Bridge. Many of those voices are celebrating the new deal as a reasonable concession for maximum payoff.

In the wake of this now-solved dispute, there is some evidence that Canada is learning how to stow our outrage and get more of what we want by acknowledging that Trump’s first and foremost priority is to create his own reality. This is the secret sauce in the MAGA recipe: create a narrative and stick to it even when all objective evidence suggests the narrative is wrong.

Loyalty to a false narrative is at the core of the Trump trade war, which began when he started imposing punitive tariffs on all countries that imported goods and services to the U.S. within weeks of winning his second term. Trump said he was stopping other countries from prospering from the importation of cheaply made goods, and repatriating manufacturing jobs to the continental U.S.

The reality is that Trump’s tariffs have slowed GDP growth and job creation, and fuelled inflation by raising prices for American consumers. That has not stopped Trump from claiming, without any real evidence, that the tariffs have been successful.

If Canada is ever going to forge a new continental trade agreement with the U.S. and escape Trump’s tariffs, we’re going to have find more opportunities for Gordie Howe-style solutions.

Let Trump rage, give him worthless concessions, and then let him celebrate the win. It’s a small price to pay for getting bridges opened and tariffs dropped.

dan.lett@freepress.mb.ca