FARMINGTON HILLS, Mich.—A Democratic Senate candidate has proposed tying all future tariff relief for Michigan to a new federal standard for correctly pronouncing the word "Abdul."
Abdul El-Sayed unveiled the plan Tuesday before a crowd of several hundred supporters. He said it would prevent elected officials from imposing costs on communities whose names they cannot pronounce.
Sleepy Don had spent part of the same news cycle dragging the name across four seconds of airtime. He then asked the room if anyone knew who that was. The former president later repeated the name while holding the final consonant, a move aides described as "ceremonial."
El-Sayed offered a direct response. "If you can't say the name, don't say the name," he said. "It's five letters in the right order."
The proposal came as Michigan households already pay about $3,200 a year because of existing tariffs, according to campaign figures. The former president has since imposed an additional 50% tariff on imported goods. "Who do you think pays for a tariff?" El-Sayed asked.
The candidate said recent tariff policy had been written by someone who inherited money and then declared himself an economist. "You get money from that, become a nepo baby, and then all of a sudden you think you're some kind of master businessman," he said.
The plan, titled the Pronunciation Before Taxation Act, would create a three-person panel of speech-language pathologists inside the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative. The panel would review any tariff affecting a district where at least 10% of residents have names the official cannot pronounce.
A campaign economist said the new policy would require every federal tariff order to include a certified audio file. The file would record the official pronouncing the names of affected districts.
"This isn't about language," the economist said. "It's about making sure the person signing the order can read the receipt."
The proposal has drawn support from the Michigan Association of Speech-Language Pathologists. "We are not asking the federal government to become a linguistics department," said Dr. Lena Farhat, the group's president. "We are asking it to read the invoice out loud."
Republican Senate candidate Mike Rogers did not respond to a request for comment. A spokesperson said he would not comment on the pronunciation because he did not want to be in the same sentence as the former president.
The Commerce Department said it does not assess tariffs on names, only on the goods people need. The El-Sayed campaign later released a 10-second tutorial. The tutorial was six seconds shorter than the former president's average attempt.
