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…
Page F3From§Eachthe early evening edition — 30 August 2026
Trump brokers deal with world's top oil-reserve holder; his party's Michigan candidate says tariffs can't be borne.
As it ran on the front
Two press releases landed the same week and they don't reconcile, hon. The first: the administration brokered a deal with the country that sits on top of the world's largest oil reserves. The release doesn't put a dollar figure on it, which is its own kind of figure. The second: John James, running for governor in Michigan on the same party's ticket, telling CBS that tariffs 'can't be borne on the backs of Michiganders' — his words, about his own party's policy, on the record.
Run the filing against the table. One side of the ledger is a deal with a resource-rich government, structured and announced from the top, no line item public. The other side is a state's residents, specifically named as the ones absorbing a cost that a candidate from the same party is now on record saying they shouldn't have to absorb. Those two things are supposed to be the same column — the tariff revenue, the deal terms, the benefit — and instead they're in different rooms.…
…(cont) This is not a story about whether tariffs are ever justified. That's a policy debate and it has two honest sides. This is a story about sequencing. The deal with the oil-reserve country gets announced as a win, full stop, no caveat about who pays for it. The tariff cost gets acknowledged, but only by the candidate who has to answer to the people paying it, and only after the fact, and only in the framing of 'can't be borne' — which is what you say about a cost you've already noticed landed somewhere it wasn't supposed to.
Every ledger has two columns, and the rule around here is simple: find whose name is at the top of each one. The oil deal's beneficiary column doesn't have a name in the reporting yet. The tariff cost column has a name. It's Michiganders. That's not an accusation, hon, that's just where the two documents point when you lay them side by side.
“They tell you there's no money for tariff relief, then turn around and cut a deal with a country sitting on the biggest oil reserves on the planet. Money's there; it's just not headed toward Michigan.”
“The tariffs protect American industry, plain and simple, any short-term cost is the price of strength. Though when your own candidate's calling it unbearable on the backs of voters, that's — not exactly the messaging we wanted, no.”
The receipts
President Donald Trump's Venezuela oil deal targets 65 billion barrels across 17 fields, but major infrastructure hurdles stand before pump relief.
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.