President Donald Trump is hoping that by enacting deep, draconian tariffs on Mexico, he can force them to kill migration over the U.S. border.
But he may be killing something else: his chances of re-election.
The New York Times recently published a graphic showing how much each state stands to lose from the tariffs. One of the hardest-hit states is Michigan — a state that just barely voted for Trump by a fraction of a percentage point and helped cement his victory in 2016, even while the nation as a whole voted against him. Michigan takes in over $56 billion in imports from Mexico, because a good portion of the automobile industry is headquartered there and does business across both Mexico and the United States.
That fact was not lost on Sen. Gary Peters (D-MI), who is up for re-election in 2020 and opposes the trade war with Mexico:
The detrimental effect Trump's policies are having on Michigan may not be unnoticed by residents. According to Morning Consult, as of May 2019, Trump's approval rating has dropped 20 points from where it was in 2016, with the president now underwater there 54 to 42.
Trump's path to re-election would be significantly harder without Michigan. If he lost that state, plus Pennsylvania — which has also been trending sharply away from him — he would need to hold every other state he carried in 2016 to scrape a barebones 270 to 268 electoral win.
