On Thursday, President Donald Trump signed an executive order renaming Lake Ontario “Lake America.” The move was part of Trump’s larger trade war with Canada, wherein he’s slapped a 50-percent tariff on Canadian auto parts, vehicles and steel.
That came after trade talks fell apart and Canada announced “dollar for dollar” tariffs on American goods in response to Trump’s tariff slap on Canada.
As The Independent previously reported, these announcements amount to unnecessary headaches for Republicans vying to hold on to the House and senate in the November midterm elections as they have to defend the tariffs and Trump’s frivolous renamings and vanity projects to still undecided voters.
This will likely be felt nowhere more than in Michigan, and it could not have come at a worse time.
Right now, Republicans think they have a good shot to flip Michigan’s open Senate seat. Last month, Democrats nominated Abdul El-Sayed, the far-left progressive supporter of Medicare for All and critic of the Israeli government, to replace Democratic Sen. Gary Peters.
By contrast, Republicans nominated former congressman Mike Rogers, who served in the House before Trump came along and is having trouble balancing Trump’s policies with being perceived as a somewhat reasonable option who could even draw some Democratic votes.
But El-Sayed made hay of the new Lake Ontario announcement, given the body of water is one of the Great Lakes that Canada and the United States share — and even though Lake Ontario is in New York, Michigan is the Great Lakes State, touching four of them.
El-Sayed, whose campaign markets him as a more pugnacious alternative to moderate Democrats, posted an image renaming Lake Ontario “Lake Florida” given Rogers has come under criticism for having retired to Florida, saying that Rogers can “can be just like daddy,” a clear reference to Trump.
Jokes about the name of a lake aside, the more brutal part for Rogers’ campaign might be the effect of the tariffs. This week, the National Taxpayers’ Union Foundation, broke down a list of states most affected by Trump’s tariffs.
The map showed that Michigan ranks third behind only California and Texas in terms of how much the tariffs have cost Americans, clocking in at $23 billion. That number should be concerning to the Republican Senate candidate in Texas, Ken Paxton, who also has to grapple with Trump’s decision to import 300,000 metric tons of beef from overseas, which has infuriated the state’s cattle ranchers.
But when broken down per household, Texas and California actually take a back seat to Michigan. The study showed that Michigan households are paying $5,619 to cover the tariff burden. This makes Abdul El-Sayed’s, “Money out of politics, money in your pocket, Medicare for all” slogan much more salient.
So far, Rogers has not made any major statements about the tariffs against Canada, even though it will likely hurt the vaunted Michigan auto industry. That stands in contrast to Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, who has said that Trump’s tariffs will hurt her state’s blueberry, potato and lobster industries.
But El-Sayed has pounced on the study.
“Trump's tariffs have cost Michigan $5,619 per household — higher than every other state — just so Trump can play his little vanity games,” he said on X. “Rogers will never call this out because he's corrupt and a coward.”
El-Sayed still has a long way to go. Polling shows him either neck-and-neck with Rogers or even behind Rogers. And Rogers is angling to convince as many people who will vote for Democratic nominee for governor Jocelyn Benson that they can also vote for him.
And El-Sayed has also come under fire for his campaigning with Hasan Piker, the left-wing Twitch streamer who came under criticism this week for saying that Jewish support for Israel might result in hate crimes against Jewish Americans.
That earned El-Sayed considerable heat from his Democratic colleagues.
But Trump’s continued shenanigans and poking Michigan’s neighbor up north might nullify or at least dull the sharpness of these attacks against El-Sayed and hurt Republicans’ best chance of blocking a Democratic majority next year.
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