The Canadians built and financed a new bridge connecting Detroit and Ontario, but now Trump wants his 50%.
The bridge in question is the Gordie Howe Bridge. It will strengthen the supply chains in North America’s core auto industry hub and act as an alternative to the Ambassador Bridge.
Canada’s geopolitical reality is that the U.S. will always hold more leverage, because the Canadian economy is so deeply integrated with the American economy. This relationship typical manifests as the U.S. securing more favorable terms in infrastructure projects with Canada, and this is no different. Just your standard case of biggest kid on the playground.
Hey, everybody. Peter Zeihan here. Coming to you from Colorado. Today we’re talking about trade with Canada specifically. There is a new bridge, the Gordie Howe, that is supposed to connect, Detroit to the Canadian province of Ontario. It’s been under construction for about the last decade, and it’s supposed to begin operations this year. But Donald Trump has said that he’s not going to allow that to happen unless at least half of the ownership is transferred to the US federal government.
The Canadians paid for the whole thing. The idea is it’ll be a toll bridge. once its construction is paid off the income will be split 5050 between, Canadian investors and the state of Michigan. Trump of course, because of this is an international connection, has the ability to end it in a heartbeat.
And that’s what he’s doing right now. The backdrop, Gordie Howe is a desperately needed transport connection right now. All of the road traffic and rail traffic that goes between Michigan, which is one of the big U.S. industrial states, and Ontario, which is Canada’s primary industrial state, goes through a single bridge called the Ambassador Bridge. And it is the single most cross bridge for commercial purposes in the world and is the backbone of the relationship for the US auto industry.
Keep in mind that pretty much everything that happens in Ontario, from an industrial point of view, is integrated into the United States in some way. And this is the primary conduit. So adding another conduit would be a huge boost to, the American economy from a manufacturing point of view, not to mention good for Canada as well.
The proximate issue is that the commerce secretary of the United States, guy by the name of Howard Lutnick, is buddies with a guy by the name of Matt Maroon. Literally. That’s how his name is pronounced, who owns the ambassadorial bridge and has been campaigning against anything that would build another link ever since the idea was first floated back in, I want to say 2012, because it would be competition for his project.
Right now he has a monopoly, and I have never met anyone on Wall Street who has ever described Howard. Let me, because anything other than desperate to be corrupted. And so apparently he had a conversation with maroon and then had a conversation with Trump. And now Trump is campaigning against the bridge. Let me go, by the way, is the guy on the cabinet who showed up the most in the Epstein files, if you’re into that sort of scandalous details.
Anyway, the bottom line here is not that this is a corruption thing or a trade thing. The bottom line is this is a geopolitical thing. Whenever you’re dealing with trans border transport links between the United States and Canada, the United States is always, always, always, always going to have the upper hand. Canada only has about 35 million people.
They’re scattered across the entirety of the southern border of the country. And even where they are in dense concentrations like, say, Toronto and Quebec, they don’t like each other very much and try to limit their infrastructure. So every single Canadian province but one trades more with the United States than they do with one another. And any infrastructure on the border that is designed to facilitate links is always going to be done.
The U.S way. So if you remember back to the 5060s, we had something called the Intracoastal Waterway system, which uses the Saint Lawrence River, which empties up through eastern Canada. But comes down and connects to the Great Lakes. Great lakes have things like Niagara Falls. There’s a lot of natural obstacles. And so there was an effort in Canada back in the early 50s to build out this massive infrastructure that would connect everything together.
But that also meant connecting to the United States. And so the United States basically did some version of what they’re doing right now with Donald Trump said, you pay for pretty much all of it, in this case, about 75%, and we get full access. Some version of that will undoubtedly manifest with this new bridge, regardless of what is right versus wrong and what has been agreed to before.
Donald Trump actually agreed enthusiastically to the creation of this bridge when he was president the first time around. But the first time around, his commerce secretary wasn’t nearly as desiring of being corrupted. So here we are, for Canada, this is just part of doing business with the United States. There is no other option. And so just like with the intercoastal, Canada gets to pay for it all.
The United States gets the majority of the benefits. The alternative is to not build or use the bridge in which candidate remains fractured and loses access to the world’s largest investment and commercial market. And for Canada, that’s basically a choice between a first world country and being something less. Is it fair? Nope. Is it new? Also? Nope.
