Newly Released Emails Reveal U.S. Diplomat Pressed Gordie Howe Bridge Officials Before Trump’s Combative Post

A trove of government correspondence has pulled back the curtain on the tense diplomatic maneuvering that preceded President Donald Trump’s explosive February social media post about the Gordie Howe International Bridge a post that plunged the long-awaited crossing into political turmoil just months before its planned opening.

The documents, more than a hundred pages obtained by The Canadian Press through an access-to-information request, show that a senior American diplomat contacted the head of the bridge authority with pointed questions about tolls and financing on the very same day Trump took to social media to blast the project.

According to the records, Baxter Hunt, the United States consul general stationed in Toronto, spoke by phone on February 9 with Marie Campagna, who chairs the Windsor-Detroit Bridge Authority. Campagna later described the conversation in an email to the authority’s interim CEO Chuck Andary and a pair of senior federal infrastructure officials, noting that Hunt had pressed her on several points, chief among them when toll rates would be finalized.

Campagna’s email also indicated Hunt used the call to reinforce concerns he’d previously raised in written correspondence. The bulk of her message, along with nearly all of Andary’s response, was blacked out before release, leaving much of the substance of that exchange hidden from public view.

The timing proved significant. Not long after that call, Trump published a post on Truth Social accusing Canada of trying to exploit the United States and insisting Washington would need to be compensated before he’d allow the $6.4-billion bridge to open. He also claimed, inaccurately, that the crossing had been built with almost no American involvement.

Andary wasted little time flagging the post internally. “Related, it appears that the President has just posted about us on his Truth Social account,” he wrote to Campagna shortly afterward, according to the records.

What followed was a rapid internal effort to get ahead of the fallout. Staff at the bridge authority assembled a detailed rebuttal challenging several of the claims in Trump’s post, while Andary briefed board members on the situation and later pointed to remarks from Prime Minister Mark Carney addressing the controversy. The authority also monitored how the story was spreading through the press, tallying more than 100 news articles and broadcast segments within the first day alone.

Trump’s outburst didn’t emerge in a vacuum. The New York Times has reported that it followed a meeting between Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Matthew Moroun, a member of the family that owns the rival Ambassador Bridge and has long been a vocal opponent of the Gordie Howe project. The Morouns are also known as significant donors to Republican causes.

The Gordie Howe crossing, which links Windsor, Ontario, with Detroit, was created under a 2012 agreement between Canada and Michigan that established the bridge authority as a Crown corporation responsible for designing, building, financing, operating and maintaining the structure including setting and collecting its own tolls.

The controversy forced a delay to what had been a carefully planned debut. A ribbon-cutting originally set for June 12 was pushed back, with the bridge now expected to open on July 27, following an agreement between Canada and Washington to revise how toll revenues will be shared.

Neither the bridge authority nor the U.S. Embassy in Ottawa offered much additional insight into the matter. The authority did not respond to inquiries in time for publication, while an embassy spokesperson said only that officials do not discuss the contents of private diplomatic correspondence. The spokesperson added that American officials have maintained regular contact with their Canadian counterparts to work through questions about the bridge’s financing and revenue structure.

The heavily redacted state of the released emails leaves several questions unanswered chief among them, exactly what concerns Hunt raised in his earlier letter, and how directly that diplomatic pressure may have factored into the president’s decision to go public with his grievances just hours later.