LANSING — New reporting from The Bulwark reveals “Mike Rogers may have an imaginary friend who loves tariffs” after he repeatedly shared an anecdote about a “guy—who is sometimes several guys or even an entire factory’s worth of guys—” who supposedly added a second shift to promote Trump’s reckless tariff policies. Rogers has regularly cited the story on the campaign trail to argue that Trump’s tariffs have spurred reshoring and created manufacturing growth—but “there may be more than one way this is false.” 

According to the report, there are a few different problems with Rogers’ story: “He often presents it as a recent revelation—a conversation he had just a ‘couple of weeks ago’ or ‘the other day,’ even though he’s told the story at least 31 times over the past year and a half. It’s also not exactly clear who Rogers’s guy is, which industry he works in, or if he is actually a composite guy made up of several people. That’s because Rogers’s anecdote changes rather frequently.”

While Rogers “keeps bringing up the ever-shifting second-shift anecdote” to “reinforce the false narrative that Trump’s tariffs have actually resulted in some kind of manufacturing boom, as the president promised they would,” “[y]ou have to wonder if it’s even real.” In reality, “manufacturing construction spending has slumped during Trump’s second stint in the White House and there is ‘weak evidence’ that the tariffs affected short-term manufacturing employment growth.”

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The Bulwark: Mike Rogers May Have an Imaginary Friend Who Loves Tariffs

• Mike Rogers, the Republican nominee in Michigan’s Senate race, met a guy. A guy with a story. And the guy’s story, which is about getting more work after his company became more successful, has become Rogers’s favorite story. He loves the story so much, he’s been telling it every chance he gets.

• There are just a few problems: When Rogers tells the story, he often presents it as a recent revelation—a conversation he had just a “couple of weeks ago” or “the other day,” even though he’s told the story at least 31 times over the past year and a half. It’s also not exactly clear who Rogers’s guy is, which industry he works in, or if he is actually a composite guy made up of several people. That’s because Rogers’s anecdote changes rather frequently.

• The point of Rogers’s story is that Trump’s tariffs have directly made life better for people who work in manufacturing. As Rogers tells it, this guy—who is sometimes several guys or even an entire factory’s worth of guys—has a business that has been able to add a second shift because of increased orders resulting from reshoring, a happy consequence of Trump’s tariffs.

• The first recorded instance of Rogers relating the anecdote occurred in May 2025, when, during a local radio interview, he said, “I talked to a guy who is putting on a second shift for the first time in twenty-five years because automobile companies are trying to reshore here in the United States. That’s a win, that’s a win for Michigan.”

• Rogers repeated the story later that week in another interview. (In that instance, he mentioned that the guy worked as a “fabricator.”) Over the rest of the summer, Rogers brought up what the guy told him three more times that we were able to find. This makes sense—it’s a great, illustrative story if your goal is to advocate for and defend Trump’s tariff policy, which Rogers has done throughout his Senate campaign.

• During a town hall event in September 2025—four months after initially telling the anecdote—Rogers mentioned it again, but this time, he moved up the timestamp to make it a bit more current.

• “They are starting to repurpose and reshore here in Michigan,” Rogers said. “Talked to a guy just a couple—two weeks ago, adding a second shift. Why? Because the car companies called them and said, ‘Well, I really can’t bring it from China anymore. How about you?’”

• Rogers would bring up the second-shift man dozens more times over the following year. But as he did, he started tinkering with more details.

• Sometimes, Rogers multiplied his guy into several people.

• “We have guys here who are adding a second shift for the first time in twenty-five years because the auto companies are reshoring work here in Michigan,” Rogers told Scott Jennings in October 2025. “Huge, huge, huge.”

• In a July 2026 interview with local radio host Kevin Dietz—well over a year after he first shared the anecdote—Rogers framed the conversation as having taken place “the other day.” It also now involved a whole factory.

• “I talked to a small factory the other day, Kevin—[they] created a second shift for the first time in twenty-five years, and why? Reshoring of some . . . manufacturing orders that are coming back, and so we see that across the state,” Rogers said.

• Rogers has mentioned the story in three separate interviews with SiriusXM’s Julie Mason. In an interview in September 2025, Rogers told Mason, “We have folks telling us, ‘Hey, this is the first time I’m going to put on a second shift.’” In February, Rogers told Mason it was just “a guy.”

• In some retellings, those benefiting from the additional shift worked in the automobile industry; in others, the guy “runs a small little tool-and-die shop.” In another version, the fella was “kind of a medium-sized metal fabricator.”

• A spokesperson for the Rogers campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

• It makes sense that Rogers keeps bringing up the ever-shifting second-shift anecdote. It’s a convenient tool he can use to reinforce the false narrative that Trump’s tariffs have actually resulted in some kind of manufacturing boom, as the president promised they would. The truth is that manufacturing construction spending has slumped during Trump’s second stint in the White House and there is “weak evidence” that the tariffs affected short-term manufacturing employment growth, according to the Chicago Fed.

• The plural of anecdote is not data, especially not when it’s just the same anecdote repeated over and over, shifting the details this way and that. But why look at data when you could be listening to a story from one of the guys? 

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