Holding the Newly Built and Paid for by Canada Bridge Hostage

How many more times will the fool in Washington D,C, embarrass Americans to the rest of the world???

“Anatomy of Ignorance — and Corruption,” Jack Lessenberry

Donald Trump and the Morouns, owners of the Ambassador Bridge

(Editor’s Note: If you’ve been reading me regularly, you know I’ve written twice recently about Trump’s outrageous move to prevent the Gordie Howe International Bridge from opening. This piece, which also ran in the Toledo Blade newspaper, outlines the ignorance, insanity, and corruption involved. JL)

DETROIT – Nearly everyone in southeast Michigan has been eagerly awaiting the opening of the sleek new Gordie Howe International Bridge connecting the United States and Canada.

But last week, President Donald Trump shockingly upended those plans.

“I will not allow this bridge to open until the United States is fully compensated for everything we have given them,” he said, adding, “we should own perhaps, at least one-half of this asset.”

AB: This is a stupid remark by Trump as the Canadians paid for 100% of the bridge build. Canadians paid because they knew the Americans were too ignorant to realize the economic impact of this bridge. We elected an idiot to a sec0nd term as President.

What was most stunning about that statement was its total ignorance.

“We do already!” an incredulous Rick Snyder said in response to Trump’s demand for half ownership of the bridge.

Snyder, the former Michigan governor, is, like Donald Trump, a Republican. But he is also, more than anyone else, the man who found a way to make the bridge happen. Within hours, he had written a column refuting the president’s many false statements, including the claim that no U.S. steel was used to build it.

Most puzzling, perhaps, was the demand that the United States be “fully compensated.” Canada, in fact, has paid for the entire cost of the bridge. “That is a great deal,” for America, Snyder wrote in his column, ‘’Trump Wrong About the Gordie Howe Bridge,” which ran in the Detroit News on February 11, the day after the president’s ill-informed and rather bizarre social media tirade.

For years, everyone in Michigan who understood transportation knew that a new bridge over the Detroit River was badly needed. The Ambassador Bridge, built in 1930, is aging badly,

Pieces of concrete were falling from it into residential neighborhoods. The bridge wasn’t built for modern huge tractor-trailers, and it wasn’t certified to carry hazardous materials.

Additionally, it didn’t connect I-75 to Canada’s highway 401; trucks had to navigate residential streets and a dozen stoplights to get there. But every effort to build a new one was always stymied by the Moroun family, which bought the bridge in 1979 from descendants of the family that originally built it.

The Morouns, first patriarch Manuel “Matty” Moroun (1927-2020) and then, his son Matthew donated heavily to the campaign coffers of Michigan legislators, who in turn blocked attempts to authorize a new bridge for years.

But that changed in 2011. Newly elected Governor Snyder, a Republican, was determined to find a way around that. The next year, he concluded an “inter-local” agreement with Canada that allowed the bridge project to move forward. The new governor, who had made millions as a venture capitalist, couldn’t be bought.

The deal survived various court challenges. Canada did have to pay the entire $4.7 billion cost of the bridge, since Michigan lawmakers still refused to appropriate any funds. Still, the bridge is a true partnership, with Michigan and Canada joint owners.

The understanding was that eventually Canada would be reimbursed from Michigan’s share of the tolls, however long that took. Except for constructing a customs plaza, the bridge, which includes bike and pedestrian lanes, is virtually ready to open.

Exactly why President Trump is holding things up isn’t clear, but he has feuded with Canada ever since his re-election.

During what can only be called a social media rant about the bridge, he also said “China will terminate all ice hockey in Canada and eliminate the Stanley Cup,” which seems, well, irrelevant and crazy.

“I hate that all your citizens have to put up with this nonsense,” James Blanchard, a former governor of Michigan and ambassador to Canada, told a Canadian television audience over the CBC.

He said President Trump is surrounded by “crackpots,” and added that refusing to open the bridge would be a “dagger to the heart of Michigan’s economy.” Blanchard, a Democrat, was supported in this by Republican Snyder, who said that while the new bridge was essential to Canada, “given the size of each country’s economy, the negative impacts of a bridge delay are felt much more on the U.S. side.”

Exactly why Trump did this is unknown, but it was learned that Matthew Moroun, who has strongly supported President Trump, met with Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick on Feb. 9, and that the commerce secretary then called Trump shortly before the president’s threat against the bridge.

Governor Snyder summed it up this way: “If the Gordie Howe International Bridge is delayed or stopped, there actually is one big winner: The Moroun family and the Ambassador Bridge Company. Over the decades, they have spent millions trying to stop” the bridge.

Why? Every day (the new bridge stays closed) they make much more money at our expense.”

That, the Morouns do indeed.