Who is the billionaire donor family said to be behind Trump’s delay of opening Gordie Howe bridge?

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By the time he died in 2020 at age 93, his personal wealth was estimated to be US$1.7 billion.

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Then his son Matthew T. Moroun took over.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.)

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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.

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What the U.S. Senate hopeful said

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Mallory McMorrow has been a senator in the Michigan state Senate since 2019. She is currently a 2026 Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate.

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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.”

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McMorrow says she has “one message for the president: Open this damn bridge. And you’d better believe I approve this message.”

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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.”

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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.”

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Why Lutnick is being blamed for bridge delay

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Lutnick 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.

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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.

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