In Michigan, it’s never a bad idea to boost your relationship with auto workers — or ties to the auto industry.

Republican Mike Rogers spent 14 years in Congress, but before that he was an FBI agent and worked on cars.

“I started out in a car factory building Chrysler LeBaron convertibles. It’s a really good car. I love that car,” Rogers told reporters in Madison Heights this week.

Rogers worked in a non-union shop in the early 1980s making modifications to already-assembled cars.

His opponent, Abdul El-Sayed, is more white collar. He holds medical and public health degrees. However, he has blue collar backing — specifically, the United Auto Workers union.

In an interview with Michigan Public Radio, UAW President Shawn Fain explained why El-Sayed is the choice for the union’s nearly 1 million current and retired members.

“We’ve got to elect people that give a damn about workers, and not billionaires and corporate-class people,” Fain said. “I mean, and unfortunately, our political system has been hijacked by the richest people in the world.”

Michigan’s U.S. Senate race could help decide the balance of power in Washington D.C. next year. The ongoing trade war between the U.S. and Canada is just simmering under the surface. 

Tariffs aren’t always the bad guy

Fain doesn’t outwardly dislike certain taxes on imports.

“We support strategic targeted tariffs. Blanket tariffs on everything under the sun, or tariffs just to force a country to do something for political reasons? That makes no sense whatsoever,” Fain said.

“And the 50% on Canada, we don’t agree with that. Like Canada is not the problem.”

The Trump administration has placed 50% tariffs on $27.6 billion in Canadian goods and materials. The Canadian government has responded with equal levies.

A strained relationship

Marchers at this month’s Labor Day Parade in Detroit weren’t happy about the tariffs or how we’re treating our closest trade partner. Retired tool and dye man Stan Geis was one of many who carried a sign emblazoned with images of an American flag and the Canadian maple leaf.

The message: “Solidarity. We stand with our neighbor.”  

“I liked when we had the trade across the border … with men working in our country from Canada (going) back and forth. It was good. Now it just stinks.”

That’s not to say the relationship between the UAW and the workers of UNIFOR — the Canadian auto workers union — hasn’t hit some potholes.

John D’Agnolo is the president of UNIFOR Local 200 across the border in Windsor. Southern Ontario is home to factories of several major automakers.  

He says American autoworkers sometimes have the wrong idea.  

“They think that we’re taking from them when we’re not.”

D’Agnolo has just wrapped up a grueling two weeks in contract negotiations with automaker Stellantis. 

They’re not going well. Stellantis aims to sell an idled Jeep plant in Brampton, Ontario, to an armored car company.

D’Agnolo said the inconsistent tariffs are making the bargaining process more difficult.

“The challenge with these tariffs and not knowing what you’re going to get from day to day,” D’Agnolo said. “Companies are not going to invest in new programs.”

Uncertainty in Canada

Windsorites get all the Michigan political ads from Detroit-area TV stations. D’Agnolo said the current political climate is only fueling anxiety.

“You have to turn off the TV because you don’t want to hear it because it becomes your life. It becomes now you got mental issues because you’re worried,” D’Agnolo said.

“So yeah, it’s horrible right now.”

Opposite sides

In the U.S. Senate race, the two main party candidates are on opposite sides of the trade war.

El-Sayed doesn’t like that President Trump picked a fight with Canada.

“There’s a way that tariffs could be used to actually protect jobs. This ain’t it. Like all things Donald Trump, it is chaotic, ham-fisted, self-serving,” El-Sayed said.

El-Sayed points out that his Republican opponent was an advocate for free trade until this latest round of tariffs.

For his part, Rogers told C-SPAN this week he plans to collaborate with Trump in a way El-Sayed will not.

“I will go back to work with the president on tariffs that are working and work with the president on tariffs that are not working,” Rogers said.

“You know, my opponent, all he wants to do is fight with Trump.”

Cost of tariffs

A conservative free market organization, the National Taxpayers Union Foundation — says President Trump’s tariffs are costing Michigan households an extra $5,600 per year. 

That’s the third-highest in the nation behind California and Texas.

Steve Grigorian heads the influential Detroit Economic Club. He thinks that could play a role in the election. 

“We’re business people, but we go to the grocery store, we go to fill up our gas tank. So it’s definitely top of mind. I think it will definitely be top of mind as people go to the polls”

Ballots for the November election were sent out this week. Election Day is less than six weeks away.

Originally published by Michigan Public Radio. 

Dr. Abdul El-Sayed says he saw it coming.

“When you launch a campaign and you’re trying to get money out of politics,” he told The Metro, “that invites record amounts of spending against you.”

More than $60 million in outside money went into last week’s Michigan Senate primary, most of it aimed at stopping him. The largest single source was AIPAC, whose super PAC spent about $30 million backing U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens — the most the pro-Israel group has ever put into a congressional primary.

El-Sayed won by fewer than 15,000 votes.

He ran health departments in Detroit and Wayne County, and he now faces Republican Mike Rogers for a seat that could decide control of the Senate. If he wins, he would be the first Muslim to serve there.

He sat down with The Metro’s Robyn Vincent — in the same studio where he announced his run in April of last year.

The money that defined the race

El Sayed came back to the spending repeatedly, including when asked why he lost Detroit. “Ask yourself, if there was no outside spending in this campaign, where do we think votes would have gone?”

He won’t stop saying genocide

Did calling the war in Gaza a genocide drown out his message on health care? He said it isn’t a trade he’ll make: “The job’s not worth it. The work is worth it.”

To Jewish voters who hear his criticism of Israel as criticism of them: “Judaism and the Jewish people are a light unto the world. But Judaism and the Jewish people are different than AIPAC and the Israeli government.”

Black Democrats and the ‘uncommitted’ vote

Many Black Democrats in Michigan blame the 2024 “uncommitted” protest vote, which El-Sayed backed, for costing Kamala Harris the state. Keith Williams, who chairs the state party’s Black Caucus, endorsed Stevens and said El-Sayed was with uncommitted only when it suited him.

“Convenience would have been to say nothing and stay quiet,” El-Sayed said. He noted that Harris endorsed him Friday. “I don’t think she thinks I’m the reason that she lost.”

On mistrust between Black and Arab Detroit, he said Arab and Muslim Michiganders can’t object to anti-Arab racism while tolerating racism toward Black Detroiters. “Standing up against racism is about principle. It’s not about tribalism.”

Data centers and health care

El-Sayed said what he’d write into federal law on data centers, after campaigning against the Oracle and OpenAI project in Saline Township: protections for local water, no utility rate increases, guaranteed union jobs, and money held in escrow before construction begins.

On Medicare for All, he acknowledged a freshman senator can’t deliver it alone. “You can’t get it all in one shot. But politics, as all of us know, doesn’t just move linearly.”

The Metro has invited Republican candidate Mike Rogers on the program several times and has not heard back.

Hear the full conversation using the media player above.

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