The president of the United States became aware Monday evening, apparently for the first time, that a new bridge is set to open between Michigan and Ontario. The project promises to create a fast and inexpensive route that Michigan’s farmers and businesses have sought for decades.
Donald Trump decided this could not stand.
In a typically discursive social-media post, Trump announced, “I will not allow this bridge to open until the United States is fully compensated for everything we have given them, and also, importantly, Canada treats the United States with the Fairness and Respect that we deserve.” The post also predicts that ice hockey will soon be banned in Canada as a result of its trade agreement with China. On the plus side, it does refer to Canada as a “Country” rather than, as the president has enjoyed describing it, a state.
On the surface, this looked to be just one more Trumpian tantrum, the kind that regularly pops up when he sees something distressing on television or is spoken to by a woman without the self-abasement he demands.
But subsequent reporting suggests that this was something even worse: an episode that sums up Trumpian economics in all its stupidity and atavistic sleaze.
Hours before Trump’s post, according to The New York Times, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick met with Matthew Moroun, the owner of a competing bridge between Michigan and Ontario. Lutnick then spoke with the president by phone. You might wonder why a major international bridge has an owner when such things are ordinarily in public hands. The answer is that the Ambassador Bridge was privately constructed, and for decades has stood as the sole trucking link from Detroit to Windsor, a key thoroughfare for national and international commerce. If you want to travel from Michigan to, say, Boston, your fastest route runs through Canada.
The Ambassador Bridge gets clogged with traffic and charges expensive tolls, which Moroun is able to compel because his customers have no practical alternative. A separate tunnel connects Detroit and Windsor, but larger trucks can’t use it. Moroun’s family has spent decades and millions of dollars trying to keep things that way, relentlessly lobbying to block construction of a second bridge desired by drivers and merchants on both sides of the Detroit River.
A breakthrough arrived in 2012. Rick Snyder, a Republican who was then Michigan’s governor, cut a deal with Canada to build the Gordie Howe International Bridge. Snyder had to work around the recalcitrant Michigan legislature, which had been plied with Moroun donations, by using executive authority. The terms of the deal required Canada to finance all construction costs. Canada is permitted to collect full tolls until it recoups its investment, and ownership of the bridge is to be split equally.
The project would unlock billions of dollars in savings for consumers and businesses. The sole loser is Moroun, a billionaire whose fortune rests on rent seeking. Now that the bridge construction is essentially complete and set to finally open, Moroun has gone to the administration, and Trump has shut down his competition.
Trump’s stated demands to open the bridge are a mixture of fantasy and contrived grievance. Trump complains in his post that the bridge was built without American material, which is false, and insists, “With all that we have given them, we should own, perhaps, at least one half of this asset,” which is already the case.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, attempting to add a sheen of rationality to the president’s ultimatum, said, “It’s also unacceptable that more of this bridge isn’t being built with more American-made materials.” This is a difficult requirement to meet unless Canada decides to tear down the bridge and rebuild it with more American-made material.
Trump’s post also requires, as a condition of opening the new bridge, that Canada give the United States more “respect.” One way other countries have demonstrated respect to Trump has been furnishing him with expensive gifts or investing in his family businesses. Canada’s rules against bribery make this negotiation shortcut more difficult.
[Franklin Foer: Why the Gulf monarchs shower Trump with gifts]
This episode is a prototypical demonstration of Trump’s economic worldview. Faced with a policy choice that pits the interests of millions of people against the wealth of a single rent seeker, Trump has intervened in a way that benefits the billionaire.
The insight that the free exchange of goods and services has positive-sum benefits—a core tenet of market economics—has always eluded Trump. His instincts are not capitalistic but pre-capitalistic. He has the mentality of a Renaissance baron, hoarding power and collecting tribute rather than innovating and creating wealth.
The president may be hurting a foreign country, but that does not mean he is helping ours. He is shrinking the pie, while delivering a larger slice of it to a Trumpian oligarch.
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