The Democrats sure hope so, and they are attacking Republican candidates in key states like Michigan on this issue. Mike Rogers is now openly arguing against Mr. Trump’s position, but can he distance himself from the party’s standard bearer?

One of the songs that was popular when I was a boy was Kenny Roger’s you picked a fine time to leave me Lucille. A typical country song full of misery and bars and the reality of often hard lives we face, the song haunted the listener with the pain of, not just a broken marriage, but a broken man and a broken woman. For the husband, there couldn’t have been a worse time for her to leave, with four hungry children and a crop in the field. And for Michigan Senate candidate Mike Rogers, Mr. Trump’s renewed trade war against Canada this fall couldn’t have come at a worse time.

Americans elected Donald Trump in part to correct the higher prices of Biden’s spending binge–he promised he’d get the prices down quickly. But his first order of business as president was to start trade wars with the entire globe. You remember Liberation Day. His efforts have been twice ruled unconstitional, and we’re now in round three, which will likely meet the same fate. If you can believe it, his 3rd attempt at tariffs is appealing to Smoot Hawley. Yes, that Smoot Hawley–which is widely believed by both economists and historians to have helped accelerate the depression. While I in no way want to assert that his current actions will lead to a depression (Liberation Day was much uglier, which is why Mr. Trump did have to back off), there is also no other way around the fact that he is raising prices somewhat and causing the economy to contract. Michigan is a key part of this. Republicans generally and Mr. Trump specifically will note that Democrats are upside down on many 80-20 issues (e.g., men in women’s sports) and yet the idea that we need to make Canada an enemy and try to kill their economy to show them we’re the big gorilla is not something that has a big political following. Michiganders are getting a painful lesson in economics and they’re not very happy about it, thus Mike Rogers’ commercial.

Will it be successful? Michigan Democrats rolled the dice with the DSA-light Abdul Al-Sayed, whose extreme positions ought to make this a winnable seat, even in a year that historically will go against the ruling party. And yet Al-Sayed is up in both the polls and polymarket. I still have hope for a GOP pickup, but Mr. Trump’s latest expansion of his trade wars, picking yet another fight with Canada, make this much more difficult than it should be. Didn’t have to be this way, but alas, with Mr. Trump, it did.