Mike Rogers breaks with Trump in Michigan Senate race on tariffs, Iran

Michigan Republican Senate nominee Mike Rogers sat at a neighborhood bar, a bottle of Canadian Labatt Blue pilsner in hand, and delivered a message that would have been hard to imagine just weeks ago.

“Here in Michigan, we know that Canada is not our enemy,” Rogers says into the camera in an advertisement released Oct. 7. “We need to end this tariff war now.”

He never mentions the man who started it: President Donald Trump.

It’s a dramatic reversal for Rogers, who spent months defending Trump’s tariffs, saying as recently as September that “Trump is right to put America first” by imposing duties. But in Michigan, where farms, factories and tourism rely on Canadian trade, Trump’s trade fight and Ottawa’s retaliation have become a political quagmire three weeks before an election that could decide Senate control.

Rogers is locked in a dead heat with Democrat Abdul El-Sayed. The Cook Political Report with Amy Walter rates the contest a toss-up, with neither candidate emerging as a clear favorite. Polling aggregator FiftyPlusOne has El-Sayed with a four-percentage-point advantage over Rogers.

And Rogers’ omission of Trump – mirrored in an earlier ad calling for an end to the war in Iran – reflects broader GOP anxiety heading into November’s election. Even as Trump urges voters to “pretend I’m on the ballot,” many battleground Republicans are barely talking about him in general election ads, with some using them to tacitly break with his signature policies. 

Fifty-seven of 1,324 Republican candidate ads in the general election period mention Trump – 4.3%, down from 47.1% during the primaries, according to a CNBC analysis of AdImpact data. The analysis counts distinct ads, rather than how often they aired, and includes spots scheduled through the end of October.

Democratic candidates are invoking Trump far more often. He appears in 20.9% of their general election ads, nearly five times the Republican rate.

“Republicans needed to toe the Trump line to win the base in the primaries, but they need independence to survive November,” said Ron Bonjean, a Republican strategist and partner at ROKK Solutions.

Michigan conducts roughly $80 billion in annual trade with Ontario, according to the Michigan Chamber of Commerce. Canada is also Michigan’s top export market, buying $23.2 billion in goods last year, roughly 39% of all state exports, according to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative. 

The relationship is especially important to automakers, whose parts routinely crisscross the border before final assembly. The Detroit Three – General Motors, Ford and Stellantis – reported roughly $6.5 billion in combined tariff-related costs in 2025, according to a CNBC analysis of company financial disclosures. 

“You can’t…