Leaders in Gary, Ind., have recognized a truth facing many older American communities — that revitalization sometimes requires preserving the past, sometimes adapting it, and sometimes removing what no longer serves any productive purpose.
Page F1From§Eachthe supper edition — 30 August 2026
GOP Candidate Says Tariffs Can't Be Borne By Michigan Workers; Tax Code Still Offers Investors A Rebuilding Incentive
As it ran on the front
The filing this week has two line items worth setting side by side, hon. Item one: a Republican candidate for governor of Michigan says out loud that tariffs cannot be borne on the backs of Michiganders — his words, his state, his own party's tariff policy. Item two: a piece on the tax code, filed the same week, describing how the code can help America rebuild, through incentives for investment.
Run those two filings against each other and the gap is not subtle. One is a cost that lands on a paycheck at a plant in Michigan, passed through in the price of parts and cars, borne, by the candidate's own account, by workers who did not vote on the tariff schedule and cannot appeal it. The other is a benefit that lands on a balance sheet, available to whoever already has capital to invest, structured through the tax code rather than through a wage.…
…(cont) We do not accuse anyone of anything here. We just note that the tariff is described as unbearable and the incentive is described as help. Both are policy. Only one of them asks the household to eat the difference at the register.
Reconciling the two: a tariff is a tax collected at the border and paid, eventually, by the consumer or the worker whose employer passes the cost along, because tariffs are not absorbed by the exporting country, they are line items on an invoice, and invoices get paid by whoever is holding them when they arrive. An investment incentive, by contrast, is a deduction or credit that reduces what the investor owes rather than adding to what the worker pays. One tightens a household budget. One loosens a corporate one. The same tax code produced both, in the same season, aimed at different columns of the ledger.
This is not a story about villains. It's a story about where the ask lands and where the relief lands, filed on the same day by two different desks of the same party, and read, if you're lucky, by nobody who has to reconcile it against a mortgage.
The number worth keeping is not a headline number. It's whichever number shows up on your invoice next quarter, and whether it went up or down, and whether the person who wrote the policy has to check the same invoice you do.
“Same week a Republican running for governor admits tariffs are hitting his own state's paychecks, the tax code's investment break stays right where it's always been, for the people who don't punch a clock. You can always find money for the guys with a portfolio; the guy on the line just gets told to be patient. That's not an accident, that's the design.”
“Look, tariffs protect the auto industry long-term, and the investment incentive isn't a handout, it's how you get factories rebuilt in the first place — c'mon, that's just basic economics, everybody wins eventually, or, well, most people, over time, assuming the — did I say most people? I meant, it's complicated.”
The receipts
Amid the trade war between Canada and the U.S. that will likely affect Michigan and the auto industry, Rep. John James, the Republican candidate for governor in Michigan, told "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan" that he has been in…
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.