A tale of two bridges and one president

For truckers, the Ambassador Bridge is the only game in town.

The bridge connects Windsor, Ont., with Detroit, Mich., and is one of the busiest border crossings between Canada and the U.S. (Cars can also use the Detroit-Windsor tunnel.)

The scale of the crossing is quite something: 40,000 commuters, along with US$323 million in shipped goods, cross the bridge every day.

The billionaire Moroun family of Detroit has owned the Ambassador Bridge since 1979, along with duty-free operations and trucking and logistics businesses — but the bridge and its tolls are seen as a profitable anchor for the business empire. They’ve fought any sort of competition with their monopoly tenaciously — enough that Forbes magazine once nicknamed family patriarch Manuel (Matty) Moroun “the troll under the bridge.”

Now, a competitor is scheduled to open. The Gordie Howe International Bridge is a new, publicly-owned bridge that’s expected to ease congestion between the two cities as well as to lower the hefty tolls levied on truckers using the older bridge.

Started by the Harper government, the $6.4 billion Gordie Howe Bridge was built at Canadian expense and will be run by a Canadian not-for-profit Crown corporation which will collect tolls on the Canadian side. Canada shares ownership with the State of Michigan.

Unlike the Ambassador Bridge, the Gordie Howe Bridge is a highway-to-highway bridge, which will take truck traffic off city streets with traffic lights in Windsor, making the transit smoother.

The new bridge is expected to open this week — unless U.S. President Donald Trump gets in the way. Trump posted on social media in February that he was opposed to the opening, saying “I will not allow this bridge to open until the United States is fully compensated for everything we have given them, and also, importantly, Canada treats the United States with the Fairness and Respect that we deserve” — which in itself is odd, because during his first term, he had issued statements supporting the new crossing between the two countries.

And now, as of Thursday morning, it looks like the bridge opening will be delayed.

There is a signed agreement between Canada and Michigan to build, open and operate the bridge, but what’s a signed contract to a man with no honour?

So why would Trump be opposed to a move that would lower tolls for trucks crossing between Canada and the U.S.? Wouldn’t it make sense that the lower toll costs would not only make pricing more competitive, and perhaps pass lower costs on to American citizens — the same citizens who elected Trump?

Why would he side with a monopoly and a billionaire family when the new bridge was almost ready to open and those cost savings were in sight?

Interestingly, the New York Times has reported that Trump only started opposing the new bridge — and suggesting he might not allow it to open — after Matthew Moroun, Matty Moroun’s son and the new head of the company, met with U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, and Lutnick, in turn, subsequently phoned the president.

It’s clear that Donald Trump is nakedly transactional — he likes people who butter him up, who praise him, who he identifies with. It’s why those who donate to causes he likes or holds part of get huge government contracts and why donors get pardons for convictions following their guilty pleas for massive frauds.

Because he’ll directly harm the rest of America to help his friends.

And it looks like he’s close to doing it again. With a $6.4 billion bridge.

We’re just the collateral damage.