Don't keep your hopes high for the largest U.S.-Canada border crossing
The enormous Gordie Howe International Bridge was supposed to be a game changer for cross-border trade, but the $6.4-billion bridge linking Canada and the U.S. is looking more and more like a white elephant amid a worsening trade war and American threats of annexation.
Spanning the Detroit River between Michigan and Ontario, the bridge was hailed as a new symbol of cooperation between the two nations and longtime trade partners until cross-border relations fell apart in early 2025.
Instead, it has become a symbol of the deteriorating relationship between the two nations, and if tariffs remain long-term, the Gordie Howe International Bridge may never live up to its true potential as a cog in the busy international shipping corridor.
The new crossing — which officially became North America’s longest cable-stayed bridge in 2024 —was designed to relieve overcrowded crossings linking Detroit and Windsor while filling a missing link in the international trucking corridor between Highway 401 in Ontario and I-75 in Michigan.
Trade has already slowed at the nearby Ambassador Bridge, while the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel is almost certainly seeing lower tourist traffic than the same time last year.
A third international crossing between Detroit and Windsor made a whole lot of sense in the years leading up to the current disintegration of Canada-U.S. relations, but does it still make sense in 2025?
Based on the continued progress at the bridge in recent months, it seems that the team building this new behemoth remains bullish about a future thaw in U.S. isolationist and expansionist rhetoric.
New images shared by the project team show that, regardless of the rapid-fire decrees being hurled from the White House, the bridge remains one stronghold of U.S.-Canada cooperation.
The record-setting bridge is still on track to wrap up construction later this year, though its projected September 2025 opening is 10 months later than initially anticipated.
Upon opening, the bridge will welcome the single-largest port of entry in Canada — though the level of traffic it receives will depend mainly on how the next several months of political uncertainty unfold.