A few of you have messaged about this bridge business. Trust me, we’re all aware.

Let’s start with a little refresher on the new Detroit River crossing, known as the Gordie Howe International Bridge, to honor the Canada-born Detroit Red Wings hockey legend. The Canadians came up with the name, which is a great symbol of the sort of two-nation relationship the bridge represents – warm, interdependent, close. (It used to be a reality, now it’s more of a nearly lost cause, but we remain hopeful.)

The bridge itself was the Canadians’ idea. The existing span, the Ambassador Bridge, is nearly a century old and was built for a different time. While it can be entered from the freeway on the American side, it dumps out onto plain old Huron Church Road in Windsor, six lanes and divided to be sure, but otherwise just a plain old early 20th century thoroughfare. It carries a ton of truck traffic, which must navigate something like a dozen traffic lights before it intersects with the 401, the main freeway leading to Toronto and beyond.

So imagine living near this. The exhaust, the noise, the constant, 24-hour rumble of semi trucks. It is…not a good neighborhood. What’s more, the bridge is privately owned. By one family, the Morouns. The old man who gained control of it years back was the child of Lebanese immigrants, and grubbed for every nickel like it was the last thing standing between himself and starvation. He had one child, who now runs the business. It is…fantastically profitable. We did some reporting on this when I was at Bridge (the publication, not the Ambassador’s newsletter, haha), and the conservative estimates were jaw-dropping, an annual cash flow in tolls alone of something like $60 million a year. And that’s just the bridge. They also own or control duty-free shops and gas stations on the bridge approaches, significant trucking interests and lots and lots of real estate in the neighborhood, on both sides of the river. They are billionaires.

The Canadians have, at various times, tried to mitigate the damage done by the bridge’s presence, and the owners have not been very amenable. The family is perfectly willing to build a new bridge, but only next to the current one, which doesn’t solve the freeway problem. So some years ago the Canadians said, OK, fine, we’ll build our own. Which threatens the Moroun monopoly, obviously. Something like 60 percent of all Canadian/U.S. trade goes over the Ambassador Bridge. (The tunnel under the river is too low-ceilinged to accommodate trucks.) And the Morouns have fought it ferociously, lobbying the state legislature and sponsoring a ballot measure to require a vote of the people (which lost), every trick in the book.

But the last Republican governor, Rick Snyder, believed a new bridge would benefit the state’s economy, and was finally able to get the deal done. The rough outlines: The Gordie Howe bridge would be co-owned by the two nations. It would be 100 percent paid for by the Canadians, to be repaid through tolls. After 30 years, the fare split would revert to 50-50. And construction began. Covid messed up the schedule, but the two sides of the roadbed met summer before last, and the bridge is expected to open later this year. It will have a pedestrian/cycling lane! A friend and I have an occasional lunch date at a Mexican spot nearly in its shadow, and we’ve been talking about biking over to get dim sum (Windsor has an excellent Chinese restaurant scene) for years now.

Enter Donald Trump, and his rant the other night that he would not allow the new bridge to open until the U.S. got a better deal. There was also some insane shit about hockey and the Stanley Cup. Excuse me? A 100 percent paid-for-by-the-other-guy bridge, which has already supported hundreds of construction jobs — we saw them in that Mexican joint often — is not a good deal? And why does he bring this up now, when the bridge is 99 percent done and construction started under his presidency?

This is my shocked face:

The billionaire owner of a bridge connecting Michigan with Canada met Howard Lutnick, the U.S. Secretary of Commerce, on Monday hours before President Trump lambasted a competing span, in the latest flashpoint in the deteriorating relationship between the United States and Canada.

Matthew Moroun is a Detroit-based trucking magnate whose family has operated the Ambassador Bridge between Detroit and Windsor, Ontario, for decades. He met on Monday with Mr. Lutnick in Washington, according to two officials briefed on the meeting who requested anonymity to discuss a private conversation.

After that meeting Mr. Lutnick spoke with Mr. Trump by phone about the matter, the officials said.

Shortly afterward, Mr. Trump threatened to block the planned opening of a new bridge between Detroit and Windsor, which would take away toll revenue from Mr. Moroun’s crossing, if Canadian officials did not address a long list of grievances.

Grievances. I fucking ask you.

I don’t know how this will work out. In my movie dream, the ribbon is cut in the middle and we all just start using it, staffing the customs and tollbooths with volunteers, a la Minneapolis. We just ignore him. Or name a toll plaza after him, that might do it. Because this is ridiculous.

OK, it’s Wednesday. Time to do the crossword and make a plan for he day. Have a good one.