There are many things one can say about the Gordie Howe International Bridge. It‘s big, expensive, it connects Detroit and Windsor, and it was built to move goods, relieve pressure on the Ambassador Bridge, and make one of the busiest trade corridors in North America work a little less like a clogged sink with international paperwork.
It is also, apparently, too dangerous to cut a ribbon near. The ribbon-cutting for the new bridge was supposed to happen on June 12. Then, with the ceremony close enough that someone had probably already ordered the scissors, it was postponed. The official explanation was that Canada and the United States needed more time to resolve “outstanding issues.”
That phrase is doing a lot of work, “outstanding issues” can mean anything. It can mean permits, paperwork, or that someone discovered the commemorative plaque spelled Windsor with a z. It can also mean that a publicly funded bridge, years in the making, somehow became inconvenient at the exact moment it was ready to be useful.
Now, we should be fair, fairness is important. Fairness is the small decorative parsley sprig of political writing. So here are the facts, arranged without accusation, merely in the order in which they appear to have happened.
The Moroun family owns the Ambassador Bridge, the private Detroit-Windsor crossing that has long enjoyed a very profitable place in the world. The Gordie Howe International Bridge is its publicly owned competitor. Naturally, the Morouns have not greeted this new bridge like a baby nephew at Thanksgiving.
Earlier this year, Matthew Moroun donated $1 million to MAGA Inc., a Trump-aligned super PAC. Then Donald Trump decided the new bridge was a problem. He complained that the United States was not getting enough out of the deal, even though Canada financed the project and Michigan stands to benefit from the new crossing. He demanded that .....
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