Washington — When the Gordie Howe International Bridge eventually opens after repeated delays by the Trump administration, the span likely will see far less traffic in its initial years than planners previously anticipated.
Car and truck flows across the bridge, according to a Detroit News analysis that uses 2025 data as a reference point, could come in 6.6% to 8.6% below the latest estimates. That translates to about 400,000 to 500,000 vehicles annually. Compared to earlier estimates from the planning stages for the crossing, traffic will fall short by millions.
Business leaders in and around Detroit agree that when the new bridge connecting the Motor City to Windsor opens — on July 27, per U.S. and Canadian officials — it will be a boon to a binational region where manufacturing and overland trade are core economic drivers. But they also said benefits — and tolls meant to help Canada pay for the infrastructure project — will be diminished thanks to the ongoing U.S. trade war with its northern neighbor.
“No one could have anticipated that U.S. trade policy with Canada could have done such an abrupt 180-degree turn,” said Patrick Anderson, CEO of the Lansing-based Anderson Economic Group. “The data on bridge crossings both show that trade is down, and that the potential users of the new bridge are significantly less than what we and many others projected five and 10 years ago.”
The impact of the slowdown is twofold: Regional businesses that previously relied on the easy and untaxed flow of goods have had to downshift or otherwise alter their operations, and Canadian authorities that financed the Gordie Howe might need longer to collect toll revenues to pay off construction costs.
The deal between U.S. and Canadian negotiators to finally open the bridge includes a new arrangement to split net profits once the $4.7 billion infrastructure project is paid off, with the U.S. portion being placed in a fund for economic development efforts on the Michigan side of the border.
“The word ‘net’ does a lot of work in this. We are sharing after Canada is paid back,” Carney told CTV Calgary on Sunday. He also cautioned that traffic — aided in part by those economic development funds — will take time to build up.
“There’s not going to be a lot of net to split,” the prime minister added.
The potential shortfall in traffic at the Gordie Howe Bridge compared to previous expectations, experts said, is due to a series of blows: The global financial crisis in 2008 and its aftermath, the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, and now President Donald Trump stoking trade tensions with Canada.
A Detroit News analysis of federal international trade data from the U.S. Census Bureau, private and public border-crossing data and past traffic projections illuminates the situation in more detail ahead of the bridge’s scheduled July 27 opening.
Cross-border trade trending down
Trade between the United States and Canada is down significantly over the past two years, with that impact especially felt at Michigan’s two current commercial border crossings with Ontario: the Ambassador Bridge in Detroit and the Blue Water Bridge in Port Huron.
Collectively, those bridges facilitate the import and export of about one-third of all trade between the two countries, which totaled more than $700 billion (and $250 billion across the two bridges) in each of the past four years. Those numbers have begun to wane, however.
Overall trade between the countries was down by close to $47 billion (or 6%) in 2025 compared to the previous year, according to U.S. federal data. In the first five months of 2026, trade was again below previous benchmarks — down $11.1 billion (or 3.5%) compared to the same period in 2024, the last full year before Trump returned to office.
The decline is even steeper at Michigan’s commercial crossings with Canada. On aggregate, trade across the Ambassador and the Blue Water is down 7.6% so far this year compared to 2024.
(Individually, trade is up a mild 2.5% vs. 2024 levels at the Blue Water as more shippers take advantage of lower toll rates, but down a dramatic 14.9% at the Ambassador. The aggregate numbers are a better reflection of total trade.)
Observers attribute the overall decline to Trump-imposed tariffs of 25% to 50% on key Canadian goods like motor vehicles, steel, aluminum and copper.
“Some people have called this region ground zero for the impact of tariffs,” said Marta Leardi-Anderson, executive director of the Cross Border Institute at the University of Windsor.
She continued: “We’ve seen layoffs in the industries that feed into the automotive industry, and we’ve seen a scaling back of U.S. purchases of aluminum and steel. So, it doesn’t bode well for an integrated cross-border economy and sectors that rely on those things.”
Traffic also trending down, likely to miss projections
With the slowdown in trade — plus a separate slowdown in Canadian visits to Michigan — fewer vehicles are coming and going across the border. Those declines suggest that the Gordie Howe Bridge, unless it siphons off an unexpectedly high share of existing traffic, will see less immediate usage than anticipated.
Regional traffic is already below the most recent federal projections related to the new span, and even further below pre-pandemic estimates.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security in January published estimates of traffic volumes and commuting times across the Gordie Howe, which at the time seemed to be opening imminently before a sudden reversal from the Trump administration.
Those estimates, which relied on a 2018 study by the Michigan Department of Transportation, included projections of traffic volumes at the existing Ambassador Bridge, Blue Water Bridge and the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel with and without the new crossing.
The report projected total traffic of about 14.2 million cars and trucks, including 9.4 million passenger vehicles and 4.8 million commercial vehicles for the 2025 federal fiscal year. Actual data on that period from both public and private sources shows shortfalls below those figures.
Public data from the U.S. Bureau of Transportation Statistics showed traffic flows at about 13.3 million, a shortfall of nearly 1 million fewer vehicles or 6.6%. Passenger and commercial traffic came in at 8.8 million (6.4% shortfall) and 4.4 million (7%), respectively.
(That data only directly measures inbound traffic to the United States. The Detroit News analysis, in line with federal practices, doubled that number to approximate bidirectional traffic.)
Private data directly measuring inbound and outbound volumes shows a bigger shortfall. Figures from the Bridge and Tunnel Operators Association showed actual traffic just below 13 million vehicles, 8.6% below the government projection. It measured commercial truck traffic down starkly at 4 million, a 16% miss from the DHS report.
DHS projected that traffic across the Gordie Howe Bridge, which is expected to take 28% of existing passenger flows and 44.5% of commercial flows in the area, would be between 4.8 and 5 million vehicles annually in its first few years of operation. Slightly more than half of the traffic is expected to be passenger, the rest commercial.
The bridge is unlikely to achieve those levels. Assuming actual traffic from 2025, it would have handled a volume of 4.4-4.5 million if operational last year, with shortfalls hitting commercial traffic harder.
“It’s 100% clear,” said Jason Miller, a professor of supply chain management at Michigan State University. “The trade war and our tariffs on Canada have hurt traffic, certainly on the inbound side. We can see that showing up very clearly in the data.”
He and others said that the government projections, which rely on the 2018 MDOT study, have become outdated in the current Trump era. “The original numbers indicated a certain level of trade that was reflective of the time,” said Leardi-Anderson, of the Cross Border Institute.
“You had an environment for the business community that was more stable than it is today, and certainly the tariff world under the USMCA or CUSMA agreement would have been predictable,” she added, referring to the United States-Mexico-Canada free trade agreement that Trump signed in 2020 but has since flouted.
Experts also said that earlier projections — well before the Gordie Howe Bridge won approval and was named for the international hockey legend — have similarly become outdated because of unforeseen economic blows, like permanent damage from the 2008 financial crisis and the 2020 coronavirus pandemic.
“More broadly, you can still see the global financial crisis at work here,” said MSU’s Miller. “Trade never rebounded to pre-GFC levels. Michigan’s auto sector just got absolutely hammered with the financial crisis, and you’re probably looking at a lot less trade as a result.”
An MDOT report from 2009 projected traffic on a potential new border crossing at around 7.5 million vehicles in 2025, a number analysts were skeptical of even at the time.
“Traffic estimates for toll road projects in the U.S. have been largely inaccurate,” a 2011 report from the Anderson Economic Group said. The firm instead offered a wide range of traffic outcomes, including a middle scenario that is more closely aligned with present-day projections.
Slowdown impact on trucking, regional economy
The impact of the trade decline and resulting traffic slowdown has been tough on the trucking industry and the regional economy more broadly. The slowdown could also hinder Canada’s planned payment for the bridge.
“If you’re a company specialized in cross-border movement — especially of let’s say, steel and aluminum from Canada to the United States — then this has been incredibly painful,” said MSU’s Miller.
“A lot of trucking companies are very, very, very small,” he added. “I guarantee you that this trade war has put carriers out of business on both sides of the border because it’s disrupted their operations to a point that they just can’t find alternative customers to a enough of a degree to stay in business.”
Bob Costello, chief economist for the American Trucking Associations, also acknowledged the pain for logistics companies in the area.
“There’s a lot of trade between the U.S. and Canada. If you are a Michigan-based carrier and you’re in that line of business, these things are crucial to you — and it’s all sorts of products too. A lot is auto industry related, but not all,” Costello said. He pointed out that trucking volumes are up slightly in the United States this year as the industry continues to stabilize from pandemic-era swings, but down in the Detroit area. “It’s tough for those fleets.”
The Michigan Trucking Association did not respond to a request for comment.
Glenn Stevens, executive director of MichAuto, the automotive arm of the Detroit Regional Chamber, said trade tensions with Canada have harmed the auto industry and weakened commerce across the border.
But he noted that automakers and suppliers have become better at navigating shifting trade environments, in large part thanks to lessons learned during the coronavirus pandemic and resulting computer chip shortage. “The industry hums along. It’s very resilient,” he said.
“Things settle out. People adjust. Let’s say you’re an injection molding company. You used to buy resin from China or even Europe, and now you buy it from South Carolina.”
The Windsor-Detroit Bridge Authority, which was responsible for overseeing the construction and future operation of the Gordie Howe Bridge, did not directly respond to a question about changing expectations for bridge traffic.
“The Gordie Howe International Bridge is a result of more than 25 years of bi-national planning and represents a long-term investment in critical transportation infrastructure serving the Windsor-Detroit corridor,” spokesperson Kathryn Segal said in an emailed statement.
She added: “Traffic analysis from the Detroit River International Crossing (DRIC) study indicates that based on the benefits of the highway-to-highway connectivity of the project, border processing improvements and crossing choice of the Gordie Howe International Bridge, it will play a vital role in the regional Windsor-Detroit corridor.”
Even if reduced traffic levels are lower than expected, analysts and mostly Democratic politicians have warned that continued delays in opening the new crossing are having negative consequences — for operators, truckers, manufacturers and travelers.
“While the direct costs to the Bridge operator and authority are significant, it bears repeating that these are only a fraction of the costs to the automotive industry, as well as to the agricultural, tourism, and other industries dependent on efficient crossing of the US-Canada border,” a February report from the Anderson Economic Group said.
Anderson, in a phone interview last week, added to that point: “And I’m sure it’s particularly maddening if you’re a trucker or a Canadian taxpayer.”
gschwab@detroitnews.com
@GrantSchwab
This article originally appeared on The Detroit News: Trade war could cut annual traffic on Gordie Howe bridge by 500K
Reporting by Grant Schwab, The Detroit News / The Detroit News
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By Grant Schwab, The Detroit News | USA TODAY Network
