00:00We spoke to senior White House correspondent and in-house Canadian, Josh Wingrove, about it.
00:04Talk to us about this bridge. When does it open? When does it fake open?
00:09And when can you really start driving some cars across it?
00:12I mean, it felt like this day would never come, really.
00:14It had its fake opening ceremony on Friday.
00:17The Canadians held a Canadian-only event celebrating a little bit of road hockey, as you'd imagine, being played on
00:24that.
00:24The official commercial opening comes on Monday, and this has been a long time coming.
00:28I mean, this bridge dates back more than a decade in terms of planning and wrangling and arguing over who
00:34will pay for it.
00:35This is typically the most important trade corridor in North America in terms of trade volumes.
00:41Of course, Michigan is known for its auto sector, connecting it to the part of Canada that has its auto
00:46sector.
00:46The number of tractor trailers that go back and forth is just substantial.
00:50And until now, it's been one privately-owned bridge, the Ambassador Bridge, that's been the only route in particular for
00:56those trucks.
00:57There's a tunnel, but trucks can't fit in the tunnel.
00:59And so they've always wanted a second bridge, in particular one that offered a second option to this privately-owned
01:06existing bridge.
01:08And that's what brings us here today.
01:09But obviously, it's just gotten caught up so much in the wrangling between the president and Canada.
01:14He seems to really have a bean in his bonnet of the Canadians right now.
01:18And so we saw that sort of, you know, that lightning found the pull of this bridge to try to
01:22sort of upend the deal.
01:23And that's what led to this opening being delayed.
01:26And so on the one hand, finally, finally it's opening.
01:29But on the other hand, Prime Minister Carney had to cut a deal and give Trump a slice of the
01:33pie to get there.
01:35And so it's a bit of a moving target and indicative of the fraught times that they're in in terms
01:38of Canada-U.S. trade.
01:39And as this current president – we're going to get back to the metaphorical nature of this in just a
01:43minute, Josh.
01:44But as this current president is fond of pointing out, this is a bridge that was started under President Obama
01:50back in 2012, I believe.
01:53Describe the need for it, why this has taken so long, and sort of how it's different than the Ambassador
01:58Bridge you mentioned just a moment ago.
02:01Well, it's a bit of an engineering marvel.
02:03I mean, as you know, I'm an engineer.
02:04I'm not at all.
02:05I have no expertise in this, but people keep talking about that.
02:07They wanted this just for redundancy and for added capacity.
02:13And the initial debate that went on for a long time was who would pay for it.
02:18Trump likes to say, obviously, that it came in under Obama.
02:20But let me also note that it came in under Prime Minister Harper, a conservative prime minister, Canada's last conservative
02:26prime minister, or most recent one.
02:28And so there is bipartisan consensus in Canada and in the U.S. about this, including with Michigan.
02:33And that original deal is between Canada and the state of Michigan.
02:37The U.S. government is not a part of it.
02:38So they finally struck a deal in 2012 to build this thing.
02:40And the deal was Canada would front the money.
02:43They would finally build it.
02:44And through toll revenue, Canada would get repaid.
02:47And once that happened, Canada and Michigan would split the profits or split the revenue or whatever.
02:52That is the deal that was leading into this.
02:55And Trump, of course, didn't like that and wanted a cut of the pie.
02:58And so the thinking here is that having a brand new bridge and a second option offers guarantees in a
03:04region that carries just so much traffic that, you know, God forbid something would happen or maintenance requirements or God
03:12knows on the Ambassador Bridge that there would be another option to keep trucks flowing.
03:15Of course, one big question, not only for traffic on this bridge, but for the region's economic development more broadly,
03:21is what the auto sector is going to look like in the future, not only in Michigan, but on the
03:25other side of the border in Ontario.
03:26Trump is wanting to reshore a lot of production of autos and auto parts from Ontario to Michigan.
03:32Canada, of course, looking to defend its auto sector.
03:35Where that is going to land, we don't know.
03:37And how that lands will substantially impact what kind of commercial traffic is flowing across this border.
03:44But for now, you know, this bridge, like I said, is a sort of a widespread, you know, bipartisan support
03:50in Canada, seen as basically a no-brainer up there, so much so that the country agreed to swallow its
03:56pride in front of the money for it.
03:57And that's what made President Trump's sort of intervention at the 11th hour all the more frustrating and even insulting
04:03to many of the Canadian officials who worked on this project.
04:05Josh, the thing I'm confused about is the president issued a tweet or a truth social or whatever the verb
04:11form of that is now.
04:12I love how we say issued a tweet.
04:14Truth social?
04:16I don't, you know what, that's about enough of you.
04:18An edict, sorry.
04:20Stop it.
04:21Basically saying that they've changed the deal so the U.S. now gets 50% of the profit.
04:26But that's not, it's the net profit that they're getting.
04:29And my understanding is, doesn't Canada have to pay itself back first?
04:33So how is this fundamentally different from the original deal?
04:37If you've been watching the Canadian news, which I know both of you do very closely, there's been much made
04:42about this.
04:43And the prime minister has been in hot water over how he's described this.
04:46But the way to look at it is that there are two deals.
04:49It's the original deal, Michigan and Canada, and then this new side deal between Canada and the U.S.
04:54And Carney was sort of bouncing between the two a little faster than might have been clear.
05:00And Trump is referring to the side deal.
05:03So the initial deal remains in place.
05:05Not a single thing has been touched on it.
05:07And that deal sees Michigan get half the cut once the Canadians are repaid.
05:12But what Canada has agreed to do is for 15 years, a number that Trump left out of his truth,
05:17pay half of net proceeds after operational costs to an American regional development fund
05:23with some sort of joint input on what it invests in but controlled by the Americans.
05:27And that's where we landed on this.
05:29Now, for Carney, I think it's fair to say he views this as essentially a low price for certainty
05:35in a project that opens but also that creates a structure that kind of incentivizes continued development in the region
05:42in a very modest way, obviously.
05:44But Carney is saying, look, more traffic means more development means good for everyone.
05:49And so he's sort of downplaying the Canadian concerns from critics who are saying, look, you made a concession to
05:56President Trump on this.
05:57What gives?
05:58He's saying it's very marginal, that early on there will, in fact, in his estimation, be no profits to split
06:04and that the profits would sort of ramp up over the years and towards the end of the 15-year
06:08agreement.
06:09Whereas for President Trump and Commerce Secretary Howard Ludnick, who led the push on this from the American side
06:14and even delayed a planned opening in the past, their argument is, well, look, we had nothing before
06:19and now we're getting a slice of this and isn't this great?
06:22This has been separate from the overall trade talks.
06:25But, you know, as we sit here on Friday, the president was going after the EU on trade.
06:30You know, he's got these new tariffs.
06:32Everyone's not really sure where things are landing.
06:34And he's talking about, you know, tearing up this deal, which didn't really happen to get a better deal on
06:39the bridge.
06:40All this is sort of just continued uncertainty that I think will fuel questions about how strong deals made with
06:47the Trump administration are.
06:49Trump keeps arguing that other people are breaking these deals, but his opponents in other countries,
06:55that the people on the other side of the table of them can't help but think that it seems like
06:59he moves the goalposts quite a bit on these things.
07:01And so what we have here is the two side deals, but fundamentally the bridge is opening
07:05and Carney looks like he was willing to cut off a piece of the pie to make that happen.
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