Spoke to senior White House correspondent and in house Canadian, Josh Wingrove, about it. Talk to

us about this bridge. When does it open? When does it fake open? And when can

you really start driving some cars across it?

I I mean, it felt like this day would never come, really. It had its fake

opening ceremony on Friday. The Canadians held a Canadian only event celebrating a little bit of

road hockey as you'd imagine being played on that. The official commercial opening comes on Monday,

and this has been a long time coming. I mean, this bridge dates back more than

a decade in terms of planning and wrangling and arguing over who will pay for it.

This is typically the most important trade corridor in North America in terms of trade volumes.

Of course, Michigan known for its auto sector, connecting it to the part of Canada that

has its auto sector. The number of tractor trailers that go back and forth is just

substantial. And until now, it's been one privately owned bridge, the Ambassador Bridge. It's been the

only route in particular for those trucks. There's a tunnel, but trucks can't fit in the

tunnel. And so they've always wanted a second bridge, in particular one that took you know,

offered a second option to this privately owned

existing bridge, and that's what brings us here today. But, obviously, it's just gotten caught up

so much in the wrangling between the president and Canada. He seems to really have a

bean as bonnet of the Canadians right now. And so we've we saw that sort of

you know, that lightning found the pull of this bridge to try to sort of upend

the deal, and that's what led to this opening being delayed. And so on the one

hand, finally finally, it's opening. But on the other hand, prime minister Kearny had to cut

a deal and give Trump a a slice of the pie to get there. And so

it's a bit of a moving target and indicative of the fraught times that they're in

in terms of Canada, US trade.

As this current president we're gonna get back to the metaphorical nature of this in just

a minute, Josh. But as this current president is fond of pointing out, this is a

bridge that was started under president Obama back in 2012, I I believe. Describe the need

for why this is is this is taking so long and sort of how how it's

different than the Ambassador bridge you mentioned just a moment ago.

Well, it's a bit of an engineering marvel. I mean, as you know, I'm an engineer.

Not at all. I have no expertise in this, but people keep talking about that. They

wanted this just for redundancy, and for, you know, added capacity. And the initial debate that

went on for a long time was who would pay for it. Trump likes to say,

obviously, that it came in under Obama, but let me also know that it came in

under under prime minister Harper, a conservative prime minister, Canada's last, conservative prime minister, most recent

one. And so there's bipartisan consensus in Canada and in The US about this, including with

Michigan, and that original deal is between Canada and the state of Michigan. The US government

is not a part of it. So they finally struck a deal in 2012 to build

this thing, and the deal was Canada would front the money. They would finally build it.

And through toll revenue, Canada would get repaid. And once that happened, Canada and Michigan would

split the profits or split the revenue or whatever. That is the deal that was leading

into this. And Trump, of course, didn't like that and wanted a cut of the pie.

And so the thinking here is that having a brand new bridge and a second option

offers guarantees in a region that carries just so much traffic that, you know, god forbid

something would happen or maintenance requirements or god knows on the Ambassador Bridge that there would

be another option to keep trucks flowing. Of course, one big question, not only for traffic

on this bridge, but for the region's economic development more broadly, is what the auto sector

is gonna look like in the future, not only in Michigan, but on the other side

of the border in Ontario. Trump is wanting to reshor a lot of production of autos

and auto parts from Ontario to Michigan. Canada, of course, looking to defend its auto sector.

Where that is gonna land, we don't know. And how that lands will substantially impact what

kind of commercial traffic is slowing across this border. But for now, you know, this bridge,

like I said, is a sort of a widespread, you know, bipartisan support in Canada seen

as basically a no brainer up there so much that the country agreed to swallow its

pride and front the money for it. And that's what made president Trump's sort of intervention

at the eleventh hour all the more, frustrating and even insulting committee of the Canadian officials

who worked on this project.

Josh, the thing I'm confused about is the president issued a a tweet or a truth

social or whatever the verb form of that is now.

I love how we say issued a tweet. Issue.

Truth socials. I don't I don't you know what? That's about enough.

An edict. Sorry. Alright.

Stop it. Basically saying that they've changed the deal so The US now gets 50% of

the profit. But that's not it's the net profit that they're getting. And my understanding is,

doesn't Canada have to pay itself back first? So how is this fundamentally different from the

original deal?

If you've been watching the Canadian news, which I know both of you do very closely

Nightly. There's been much made about this, and the prime minister has been in the hot

water over how he's described this. But the way to look at it is that there

two deals. So it's the original deal, Michigan and Canada, and then this new side deal

between Canada and The US. And the and Kearny was sort of bouncing between the two

a little faster than might have been clear, and Trump is referring to the side deal.

So the initial deal remains in place. Not a single thing has been touched on it,

and that deal sees Michigan get half the cut once the Canadians are repaid. But what

Canada has agreed to do is for fifteen years, a number that Trump left out of

his truth, pay half of net proceeds after operational costs to an American regional development fund

with some sort of joint input on what it invests in, but controlled by the Americans.

And that's where we we landed on this. Now for Kearny, I think it's fair to

say he views this as essentially a low price for certainty in a project that opens,

but also that creates a structure that kind of incentivizes continued development in the region in

a very modest way, obviously. But Kearny is saying, look. More traffic means more development means

good for everyone. And so he's sort of downplaying the Canadian concerns from critics who are

saying, look. You had you gave a you you made a concession to president Trump on

this. What gives? He's saying it's very marginal that early on there will, in fact, in

his estimation, no profits to split and that the profits would sort of ramp up over

the years and towards the end of the fifteen year agreement. Whereas for president Trump and

commerce secretary Howard Ludlow, who led the push on this from the American side and even

delayed a planned opening in the past, their argument is, well, look. We had nothing before,

now we're getting a slice of this, and isn't this great. This has been separate from

the overall trade talks. But, you know, as we sit here on Friday, the president was

going after the EU on trade. You know, he's got these new tariffs. Everyone's not really

sure where things are landing, and he's talking about, you know, tearing up this deal, which

didn't really happen to get a better deal on the bridge. All this is sort of

just continued uncertainty that I think will fuel questions about how strong deals made with the

Trump administration are. Trump keeps arguing that other people are breaking these deals, but his opponents

in other countries or the people on the other side of the table of them, can't

help but think that it seems like he moves the goalpost quite a bit on these

things. And so what we have here is the two side deals, but fundamentally, the bridge

is opening, and Kearny looks like he was willing to cut off a piece of the

pie to make that happen.