Prime Minister Mark Carney said on June 9 that a new bridge connecting Canada and the United States that President Donald Trump had threatened to block will open this week.
Work on the $4.7-billion Gordie Howe Bridge that links the Canadian province of Ontario with the US state of Michigan started in 2018, and it was due to be operational this year.
But in February, Trump insisted the United States should own "at least half" of the bridge named after the late Canadian-born National Hockey League great Gordie Howe.
Howe, who played much of his career with the Detroit Red Wings, was also hockey royalty in Michigan.
Trump said he would not allow the bridge to open until the United States was fairly compensated, claiming Canada had used "virtually" no US products in its construction.
According to a factsheet issued by the Windsor-Detroit Bridge Authority, the bridge was financed entirely by Canada and will be jointly owned by the governments of Canada and the state of Michigan.
Carney told reporters in Ottawa on Tuesday that the bridge would open "at the end of the week," calling it "positive news" and "a symbol, but also a fact of cooperation between our countries."
Trump's February threats about the bridge came shortly after Carney's widely praised January speech at the World Economic Forum, where he argued the president's leadership had triggered a "rupture" in the US-led global order.
Carney had also just sealed a preliminary trade deal with China, prompting massive new tariff threats from the United States.
Trump's bridge threat included an outlandish claim that Beijing would "terminate ALL Ice Hockey being played in Canada." He did not provide details on how that might happen.
