Rogers, El-Sayed outline differing approaches to tariffs and AI during Detroit Economic Club forum
Republican nominee for U.S. Senate Mike Rogers and Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate Abdul El-Sayed, during a forum hosted Tuesday by the Detroit Economic Club, both agreed that international tariffs could be sound economic tools – if used correctly – and that AI could be dangerous without federal guardrails.
With just two weeks until the Nov. 3 general election, El-Sayed and Rogers are battling it out in a race that is currently rated as a tossup, according to Cook Political Report. A recent debate between the two candidates ended up turning contentious, with few opportunities to talk policy in a calm setting. As El-Sayed and Rogers are set to take the debate stage again on Wednesday evening, the forum hosted Tuesday by the Detroit Economic Club allowed each candidate to answer more complex questions about policies affecting Michigan.
On tariffs, one of the primary economic tools used by President Donald Trump during his second term in the White House, both Rogers and El-Sayed agreed that they could be used in a positive way that might not hurt Michigan’s economy in the way that Trump’s tariffs reportedly have. El-Sayed said he was not against using them, but not in the way Trump has, while Rogers said he would advocate for the president to make adjustments.
“Like all the things that Donald Trump does, they are chaotic, they are ham-fisted, and they are self-serving,” El-Sayed said. “His version of tariffs is about accruing power either over corporations or over trading partners. That’s exactly why he’s doing this, and this version has been terrible for the American auto industry. It has been terrible for workers.” Using an analogy that he’s espoused during campaign rallies, El-Sayed likened Trump’s tariff policy to an oncologist giving too much life-saving chemo to a cancer patient, which could be deadly, instead of a little at a time to fight the disease.
El-Sayed said he believes in a tariff policy that is tied to an industrial policy “that actually makes sense.” “I think we need to continue to be the world’s leader in internal combustion engines, and I think we should build a $25,000, 300-mile range EV over the next seven years,” El-Sayed said. “We should subsidize so that we can do that off the top in the next two years, and then slowly pull those subsidies. And as we do that, we should be tariffing the EV market so that we can use our own market to incubate that product, so that we can sell it on the global market and compete with Chinese low-cost EVs.” El-Sayed clarified that he believes that the U.S. will continue to be the world’s leader in internal combustion engines, but he also doesn’t “want us to cede the global EV market, which is growing every single day.” “You cannot do tariffs without hooking it to a smart policy that actually makes sense around your industrial viewpoint,” he said. “And there has to be some subsidies because the whole point of a tariff is to protect and use your market to incubate something that you’d like to grow in your domestic market.”
Rogers, who had been a champion of Trump’s tariff regime when it was first rolled out, has since softened that tone. He has more recently said, in campaign ads and on the trail, that Trump should end his tariffs against Canada, and did so again Tuesday. “When they went to Canada, I thought that was not the right direction,” Rogers said. “Mainly because they didn’t account for how integrated we are in the automotive business, and content providers here sell into Canada for cars that actually come back to be finalized in an American plant. I just don’t think they factored all of that, so having that conversation, to me, is important.” Rogers noted information he said was relayed to him by Detroit Diesel, and said that the company was adding a third shift because of Trump’s tariffs.
Liberty and accountability
Tariffs and AI regulation both raise questions about who pays and who benefits when government intervenes in markets. Libertarians generally favor open trade, competition, and a narrow response to demonstrable fraud or harm rather than broad restrictions favoring incumbents. Candidates should identify the real costs of tariffs to consumers and the legal reach of proposed technology rules. Economic nationalism and regulatory slogans cannot replace evidence.