Mike Rogers (MI), the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate in Michigan, released a new 30-second ad on October 7. He's on a bar stool at a bar in Chesterfield Township, in a flannel shirt, holding a Labatt.
"Drinking a Labatt and watching the Red Wings, man, it just doesn't get any more Michigan than that," he says. "Here in Michigan, we know that Canada is not our enemy. We need to end this tariff war now."
As The Detroit News reported, the beer he's holding is one the president's latest trade restrictions bar from being imported. The ad doesn't criticize, by name, the man who started the tariff war: Donald Trump.
It's a good line. It's also the opposite of what Rogers has been telling Michigan for more than a year.
What he said before the ad
A year ago, according to The Detroit News, Rogers accused Democrats of "fear mongering" over Trump's tariffs and said the president's tariff policy had "put the American people back in the driver's seat."
In September 2025, at a town hall in Metamora, he mocked people worried about prices:
"And when the Democrats start getting at us, oh my gosh, coffee went up. You know, horror… Costs are up but I'm telling you what. I'd rather have good manufacturing jobs here."
He justified the tariffs that day by saying manufacturing jobs were coming back. Heartland Signal pointed out that the Bureau of Labor Statistics was recording the opposite.
In February 2026, when the courts struck down Trump's tariffs, Rogers asked for more tariff power. Trump "can't" protect domestic manufacturing "alone," he said, and should have "every tool in his toolkit to save American manufacturing and to do it urgently."
On August 29 of this year, Rogers posted: "President Trump is right to put America First, and tariffs are necessary when countries cheat American workers. But trade isn't one-size-fits-all."
Last month, he defended some of Trump's global tariffs again in an interview, pointing to GM moving Silverado production to its Orion Township plant, while admitting the tariffs on Canada will pinch Michigan consumers.
Then came the bar-stool ad.
Michigan was paying the whole time
Rogers was telling voters to relax while the tariffs were landing hardest on his own state. The Detroit Regional Chamber and MichAuto warned Trump that his 25% auto tariffs would mean "profound" pain for working-class Michiganders, in a state where one in five jobs is tied to the auto industry. Small Michigan retailers got hit hard. Michigan farmers were projected to lose $167 million in agricultural exports in 2025.
None of that is new. What's new is the calendar. Election Day is November 3, and The Detroit News reports more than 200,000 Michiganders have already cast absentee ballots.
This keeps happening
This is the second time in a few weeks that Rogers has broken with Trump on an unpopular policy without criticizing Trump by name. In late September he said the Iran war "needs to end and end quickly" — we covered that reversal here. Before that, he came out for suspending Michigan's gas tax, after having voted to raise it.
His opponent, Abdul El-Sayed, summed it up on X: "You cheerled this tariff war from the beginning and you're flip-flopping now because your poll numbers are in free fall."
A senator gets a six-year term. The question for Michigan voters is which Rogers they'd be getting for those six years: the one who mocked them for complaining about prices, or the one in the bar ad.
The bottom line
For more than a year, Mike Rogers (MI) defended Trump's tariffs, called critics "fear mongering," mocked voters who complained that "coffee went up," and asked for more tariff power when the courts struck them down. On October 7, with more than 200,000 absentee ballots already cast in Michigan, he released an ad saying "Canada is not our enemy" and calling for an end to the tariff war — without criticizing Trump, who started it, by name.
Source
Rogers shifts gears, calls for end to Trump's 'tariff war' with Canada — The Detroit News, via the Killeen Daily Herald
