Pay to play in John Roberts’s America

Before he got Donald Trump to threaten to close down the pending competition, the owner of the Ambassador Bridge made sure to pay him his emolument:

Less than one month before meeting with a top administration official to lobby against a new bridge connecting Michigan with Canada, the billionaire owner of an existing bridge donated $1 million to a super PAC devoted to President Trump.

Matthew Moroun, a Detroit-based trucking magnate whose family has operated the Ambassador Bridge between Detroit and Windsor, Ontario, for decades, made the donation to MAGA Inc. on Jan. 16, according to a campaign finance report filed on Friday evening.

On Feb. 9, Mr. Moroun met in Washington with Howard Lutnick, the secretary of commerce, who called Mr. Trump after the meeting, The New York Times reported. Hours after the meeting, Mr. Trump lambasted the competing span.

Spokesmen for the White House and MAGA Inc. dismissed suggestions of any connection between the donation and Mr. Trump’s stance.

Alex Pfeiffer, a spokesman for MAGA Inc., said in a statement: “Donations to MAGA Inc. have no bearing on government policy and any suggestion otherwise is falsely making a connection where it does not exist.”

An amazing set of coincidences! Anyway, between Citizens United and Trump v. US, none of this is corrupt and even if it was the nature of executive power in the United States is that presidents from the same party who appointed a majority of Supreme Court justices are allowed to do crimes at their pleasure in any case.

In addition to the naked corruption, this is the epitome of the kind of rent-seeking that is at the heart of Trumpism:

Hours before Trump’s post, according to The New York Times, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick met with Matthew Moroun, the owner of a competing bridge between Michigan and Ontario. Lutnick then spoke with the president by phone. You might wonder why a major international bridge has an owner when such things are ordinarily in public hands. The answer is that the Ambassador Bridge was privately constructed, and for decades has stood as the sole trucking link from Detroit to Windsor, a key thoroughfare for national and international commerce. If you want to travel from Michigan to, say, Boston, your fastest route runs through Canada.

The Ambassador Bridge gets clogged with traffic and charges expensive tolls, which Moroun is able to compel because his customers have no practical alternative. A separate tunnel connects Detroit and Windsor, but larger trucks can’t use it. Moroun’s family has spent decades and millions of dollars trying to keep things that way, relentlessly lobbying to block construction of a second bridge desired by drivers and merchants on both sides of the Detroit River.

A breakthrough arrived in 2012. Rick Snyder, a Republican who was then Michigan’s governor, cut a deal with Canada to build the Gordie Howe International Bridge. Snyder had to work around the recalcitrant Michigan legislature, which had been plied with Moroun donations, by using executive authority. The terms of the deal required Canada to finance all construction costs. Canada is permitted to collect full tolls until it recoups its investment, and ownership of the bridge is to be split equally.

The project would unlock billions of dollars in savings for consumers and businesses. The sole loser is Moroun, a billionaire whose fortune rests on rent seeking. Now that the bridge construction is essentially complete and set to finally open, Moroun has gone to the administration, and Trump.

It’s the new Republican populism.