The advice Porter offers leaders in trade-exposed industries: “I don’t think it’s going away, so they have to be nimble,” he says. “They have to realize that we’re going to be dealing with a lot of uncertainty for quite a period of time, but we’ve managed.”

Underappreciated workforce opportunities on the horizon

Beyond the industrial corridors, Porter sees a less-discussed opportunity with the new border crossing — tourism and cross-border mobility. The bridge features a multi-use path to accommodate pedestrians and cyclists, according to the federal government — a feature that differentiates it from the Ambassador Bridge, which lost pedestrian access after September 11, 2001.

“It’s possible that we could get a bit more flow coming into Canada, especially with the Canadian dollar at such a low ebb,” says Porter. “Our tourism sector is very competitive at these levels for the currency, and the new bridge will ease the flow of traffic both ways — opening another seemingly more efficient way to get across the border could actually support the tourism sector.”

The opening of the bridge at the same time as troubled trade relations also reinforces why Canada must not scale back its broader infrastructure agenda, according to Porter. “This should not dissuade provincial and federal governments from investing in trade infrastructure,” he says. “The Gordie Howe Bridge happens to be directly tied to the US economy, and the auto industry in particular, at a time when this administration is trying to throw up roadblocks, but that’s not going to be the case for a lot of other big infrastructure projects we’re looking at, like improving port facilities in Vancouver and Montreal.”

The opening of the Gordie Howe International Bridge is, at its core, a signal about Canada’s long-term intent. HR leaders in organizations navigating the Canada–US tariff landscape and labour market disruption should read it as an argument for the same: plan for the long horizon, stay nimble in the short term, and recognize that workforce infrastructure — like physical infrastructure — takes decades to fully pay back, according to Porter.