Governor Gretchen Whitmer is praising the end of the nearly weeklong blockade of the Ambassador Bridge by truckers opposed to vaccine mandates.
Whitmer said the Ambassador Bridge blockade reinforces the importance of completing a second Detroit-to-Canada border crossing. The Gordie Howe International Bridge is supposed to be finished and operating by the end of 2024.
And Whitmer said she supports state and federal actions to ensure there’s no repeat of the blockade at North America’s busiest border crossing.
“No matter what the cause or what the substance of the quote-unquote ‘debate’ is, if you’re going to unlawfully block international trade, it will not stand,” Whitmer told an online meeting of the Detroit Regional Chamber.
Whitmer said the week-long blockade complicated existing supply chain problems.
“This was, I think, a lesson to the world and, frankly, I think some in DC didn’t appreciate in the first days how serious the consequences were going to be for our nation but for our state, in particular,” she said. “One week was a loss of 51 million dollars, and that was just in the auto sector jobs alone.”