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As Democrats prepare to force a vote<\/a> in the US House this week on Donald Trump\u2019s tariffs on Canada, the president posted a lengthy diatribe on his social media platform in which he threatened to block a bridge connecting the US and Canada and made a bizarre false claim that increased trade between Canada and China would include a ban on Canadians playing ice hockey.<\/p>\n Trump began his latest screed<\/a> against the US\u2019s second-largest trading partner by claiming that \u201ceveryone knows, the Country of Canada has treated the United States very unfairly for decades\u201d.<\/p>\n The president also threatened to block the scheduled opening of the $4.6bn Gordie Howe International Bridge, connecting Windsor, Ontario and Detroit, Michigan<\/a>, built by a binational partnership that won approval during the Obama administration but began construction in 2018, when Trump was president.<\/p>\n \u201cI will not allow this bridge to open until the United States is fully compensated for everything we have given them, and also, importantly, Canada<\/a> treats the United States with the Fairness and Respect that we deserve,\u201d Trump wrote on Monday.<\/p>\n In 2012, Michigan\u2019s then governor Rick Snyder accepted a Canadian government offer to fund most of the new bridge\u2019s costs, and took the unusual step of using executive authority to bypass the legislature. Construction began in 2018 and the bridge is nearing completion. The US Homeland Security Department on 30 January published a rule declaring the bridge as an official port of entry.<\/p>\n The Canadian embassy in Washington, the office of Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer and the bridge authority did not immediately comment.<\/p>\n The cause of Trump\u2019s rage appears to be a closer trading relationship with China negotiated by the Canadian prime minister, Mark Carney, after Trump raised tariffs on Canadian imports. \u201cChina \u2026 will eat Canada alive,\u201d Trump wrote.<\/p>\n