New Republic • Feb 11, 2026
In addition to providing regular comic relief, President Trump’s eruptions over imagined slights provide opportunities for his advisers to engage in rank, devious manipulation. This may be happening with Trump’s latest tirade against Canada, in which he threatened to block the opening of the long-awaited Gordie Howe International Bridge, which will connect Detroit to Windsor, Ontario, and facilitate cargo transport between the two cities.It turns out a billionaire Trump ally who owns another bridge linking those locations—which will face competition from the new project—privately met with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick this week, according to The New York Times. Lutnick spoke with Trump after the meeting and just before Trump’s threat. Maybe, just maybe, Lutnick whispered to Trump that it would totally own Canada and supercilious Prime Minister Mark Carney if Trump blocked that bridge.But there’s another angle here that makes this even more absurd: Trump’s threat could actually backfire on him and the GOP. That’s because it will now become a big issue in House and Senate races in Michigan—and those races could help decide control of Congress. This issue clearly favors Democrats—particularly now that with this threat, Trump may be doing a solid for a fellow billionaire.There are at least three competitive House races in Michigan, and there’s also a Senate contest over the seat of the retiring Democrat Gary Peters. And this battle is well suited for Democrats to seize on. The already-built bridge has broad bipartisan support: Rick Snyder, Michigan’s former Republican governor, points out that the bridge, originally scheduled to open last September, would reduce transport costs and create jobs and that blocking it would hurt Michigan manufacturers while killing jobs and hiking costs for consumers. Now GOP candidates and incumbents will have to take a position on Trump’s threat to block the project. And since Republicans are required to agree with the Mad King pretty much at all times or face ruin, the leading GOP candidate in the Senate race, former Representative Mike Rogers, is defending Trump by insisting he merely wants “leverage” against Canada in future trade talks—an absurd, made-to-attack position.“We need a senator who is going to stand up and defend Michiganders, not be a rubber stamp for anything Trump wants,” state Senator Mallory McMorrow, one of several Democrats vying to face Rogers, told me. By backing Trump here, McMorrow continued, Rogers has “made it very clear who he works for, and it is not Michiganders. It’s Donald Trump.” It’s not at all clear the threat will give Trump any leverage in talks. After all, the rationales for it are absurd. Trump claimed the United States is getting a raw deal because we don’t own part of the bridge, that the bridge was built with “virtually no U.S. content,” and that the U.S. should be “fully compensated for everything we have given” to the project.But, as CNN documents, Michigan owns half the bridge, U.S. steel was used in the project, and Canada financed the bridge’s construction. All this was attested to by Michigan’s former Republican governor, who originally helped drive the project. Clearly, someone whispered to Trump that he’s being taken advantage of, and he then went off half-cocked on social media about it.Also making this hard for Republicans to defend is the fact that the project is supported by the state’s auto industry. That’s because it will facilitate the transport of auto parts and assembled vehicles between the two countries.It’s notable, then, that one of Michigan’s most contested House races is the open race for the 10th district. That includes parts of Macomb County, which boasts a major auto manufacturing presence and is the original home of the “Reagan Democrat.” One Democratic candidate for this seat—former prosecutor Christina Hines—says Trump’s threat will resonate badly with the district’s blue-collar workers.“This would threaten a lot of good-paying jobs across southeast Michigan, and raise costs for all the working families here,” Hines, who has family members in the auto industry, told me. She noted that manufacturing and defense, big local industries, are already struggling with Trump’s tariffs: “Delaying this bridge is another move that would raise prices and hurt the local economy.”The news that a billionaire lobbied Lutnick on this will make it worse. Truck magnate Matthew Moroun’s family runs the Ambassador Bridge—which will face competition from the Gordie Howe project—and has fought the latter for years. It’s simply extraordinary that the president of the United States upended a major project involving extensive trade and cooperation with a major ally—or a former one, anyway—right after that billionaire chatted with a Cabinet member who then apparently had a quick word with Trump about the situation.Democrats will also surely use this against Representatives Tom Barrett and Bill Huizenga, vulnerable GOP incumbents in Michigan’s 7th and 4th districts, respectively. In a statement, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee vowed to “ensure voters know exactly who Barrett and Huizenga are: weak sellouts who are driving costs up, screwing workers, and bending the knee to their D.C. bosses.” Meanwhile, one Michigan-based consultant who has supported Trump is now suggesting this could cost Republicans the Senate race.This isn’t the first time a deranged Trump intervention backfired on Republicans. On the eve of the New Jersey and Virginia gubernatorial races, Trump threatened to tank tunnel projects linking New Jersey and New York and began firing federal workers, many of whom live in Virginia. Both contributed to resounding Democratic victories in both states.Ultimately, this episode offers a jarring look at what’s really wrong with MAGA economics. In a series of posts, economist Mike Konczal explains that Trump’s agenda is foundering due to deep contradictions inside the MAGA coalition. The nationalist ideologues around Trump really believe tariffs and protectionism will cause a manufacturing renaissance that creates a lot of good jobs for working-class young men.That employment will then make those young MAGA men attractive to women, goes this theory, leading to more stable working-class communities and more births, solving population decline without having to let in immigrants. But in the real world, Konczal notes, the tariffs are hitting a lot of working-class people with higher prices, and in part due to them, manufacturing jobs have fallen, not risen. Yet those ideologues remain wedded to protectionism because, to them, nationalist belligerence and zero-sum struggles with even longtime allies are to be celebrated. But to working people in Michigan, this might look considerably different than it does to the ideologues. Hines, the candidate in Macomb County, told me that people in the region see its economic interdependence with Windsor and Canada as an affirmative good, with many crossing back and forth for employment, leisure, and trade purposes. “Our economies are really tied together,” Hines said, “especially here in southeast Michigan.”And so, if Trump’s malignant nationalism ends up helping cost Republicans the House, right in the heart of blue-collar Michigan, it would mark a fitting conclusion to this utter farce—and bring it to a close with a satisfying dose of poetic justice.