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Who is the billionaire donor family said to be behind Trump's delay of opening Gordie Howe bridge?
The Detroit-based trucking family that has owned and operated the Ambassador Bridge between Detroit and Windsor since the 1970s appears to have found powerful backing for their business interests.
The billionaire head of that family is Matthew Moroun. He made a million-dollar campaign donation to MAGA Inc. back in January, according to campaign finance reports. In early February, Trump pushed back on the opening of the bridge, saying on Feb. 9 that he would block it.
The $6.4 billion, Canadian-taxpayer funded Gordie Howe bridge could be seen as a threat to Maroun’s bottom line. The Ambassador bridge charges commercial trucks U.S.$15 to $20 per axle to cross each way (a typical tractor-trailer can have five axles), reports The Windsor Star . Meanwhile, the Department of Homeland security says three million commercial vehicles crossed the Ambassador in 2025, but that is expected to drop to about 1.6 million vehicles after the Howe Bridge opens.
The completed Howe Bridge was initially set to open in early February. Now there is no official opening date. A June news release on the bridge’s website says “Canada and the United States have agreed to delay the opening of the bridge, taking the necessary time to resolve any outstanding issues.”
What we know about the family behind the Ambassador BridgeSo, who is the billionaire family at the centre of Howe bridge delay? Matthew Maroun’s father, Matty, took sole control of the Ambassador Bridge in 1979.
Matty was the son of a poor immigrant family, who once cleaned ashtrays in his father’s gas station in Detroit. But he went on to become a billionaire, reports The Windsor Star .
Matty was born in Detroit in 1927, two years before the Ambassador Bridge opened. His grandfather had fled Lebanon before the First World War, landing in South America and later in Windsor. The family moved to Detroit when the company building the Ambassador Bridge bought and demolished their Windsor home.
He went to the University of Detroit Jesuit High School before studying chemistry and biology at Notre Dame University. After he failed to get into medical school, he went to work at the Detroit gas station run by his father, Tufick.
The family’s rise out of poverty began around 1950, when Tufick took over Central Cartage, a failing truck company that owed him money. He built a relationship with Teamsters union president Jimmy Hoffa, which gave him an edge over companies that were using non-union drivers.
By 1970, when Matty took over Central Cartage, the company had grown to 900 employees. General Motors used the firm as its main transporter. He expanded it further, including a move into Canada under the name McKinlay Transport.
With fleets of his trucks crossing the Ambassador Bridge, Moroun started buying shares in the bridge operation, eventually gaining 25 per cent ownership. Warren Buffett also owned 25 per cent, but Matty won control in July 1979 when he used his company’s credit line to buy out Buffett. Not long after, Moroun obtained full ownership by buying out the remaining shareholders.
By the time he died in 2020 at age 93, his personal wealth was estimated to be US$1.7 billion.
Then his son Matthew T. Moroun took over.
Matthew Moroun graduated from Dickson College in Pennsylvania with an economics degree in 1995. Since 2004, reports The Windsor Star, he has been chairman of the board of directors for Universal Logistics Holdings, another family-owned business. He has been a chairman of P.A.M. Transportation Services, Inc since 2007.
His son, Matthew J. Moroun, is also a Universal Logistics board member, a director of P.A.M. Transportation since 2020, and is employed in other Moroun family-owned businesses engaged in transportation.
The family has used some of its fortune to help charitable causes such as Forgotten Harvest, which provides food to people in need. Forgotten Harvest Farms also sits on about 95 acres of land that the Moroun family donated.
The family’s battle to preserve the profits garnered from the Ambassador Bridge goes back to 2012, when the Morouns spent about US$30 million on a failed Michigan ballot proposal to block construction of the Gordie Howe bridge.
In June 2018, shortly before the Gordie Howe bridge construction groundbreaking, the Ambassador Bridge company paid for a TV ad aimed at Trump, stating (inaccurately) that the public bridge would be solely Canadian-owned. (Canadian taxpayers financed the multi-billion dollar construction cost, but public ownership is split 50/50 with the state of Michigan.)
The Ambassador Bridge company started construction of a potential new bridge, building an on-ramp in Windsor in 2007. The Canadian government gave the company a conditional permit to build a new crossing west of the Ambassador Bridge in 2017. But the permit expired in 2022, when the Canadian government said the company failed to meet several conditions. The ramp was partially torn down.
What the U.S. Senate hopeful saidMallory McMorrow has been a senator in the Michigan state Senate since 2019. She is currently a 2026 Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate.
She has recently alleged, as reported by National Post , that Donald Trump won’t open the Gordie Howe bridge because the Maroun family “gave him a million bucks.”
McMorrow says she has “one message for the president: Open this damn bridge. And you’d better believe I approve this message.”
She recently told CNN that the delay “is a symbol, right in the heart of Michigan, of the corruption of the Trump administration. This is a bridge that has been built for years; more than two decades have gone into bringing this bridge to life.”
She notes that Canada has paid for the bridge but suggests the Moroun got a meeting with U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick after making that US$1 million donation, and now Trump is “railing against this bridge.”
Why Lutnick is being blamed for bridge delayLutnick is looking for changes to the toll allocations, a U.S. official close to the matter told Bloomberg, as reported by National Post . Lutnick is taking the lead on the issue with the White House’s blessing, the official said.
Lutnick considers the bridge opening as a separate matter from ongoing trade discussions. However, Lutnick believes the bridge gives the U.S. some leverage because its value is in connecting Canadian exporters to the American market, a U.S. official told Bloomberg, since the Gordie Howe bridge will reinforce the automotive sector trade corridor.
Bloomberg reported that it’s not clear how Lutnick wants to redraw the division of toll revenue – as an immediate split or a larger U.S. share in the future.
What an auto parts industry group leader is saying about Howe and CUSMAA leader in the Canadian auto parts industry says the Howe bridge won’t be a deciding factor in the upcoming Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA) review.
Automotive Parts Manufacturers’ Association president Flavio Volpe said that the U.S. administration may be using the bridge as leverage but it’s “not core” to the discussions, the Financial Post recently reported .
“That bridge will be operating beyond the lives of our grandchildren, and it’s important that we have that asset without hindrances going forward,” he said during a recent event held at the University of Windsor.
Volpe noted that U.S. manufacturers have their own reasons for wanting the bridge open. He pointed out that companies south of the border ship about $100-million worth of vehicles and auto parts through the Windsor-Detroit corridor every day. And he expects those businesses to pressure the U.S. government to open the crossing.
Volpe is also on Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Advisory Committee on Canada-U.S. Relations, created to help prepare for the CUSMA review.
He said he’s optimistic that both countries are heading toward an agreement, even if talks go into the fall.
“You should take from that that the White House is using the leverage it has in trade issues to wrap everything else in those moments.”
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