Clouds over Trump's honeymoon; the Qatar gift

 

Gordon L. Weil

Donald Trump’s first 100 days as president, a political honeymoon, were a breeding ground for controversy.

You either believed that anything he did must be right or anything he did must be wrong or went along for the ride, hoping for the best and fearing the worst.  Of course, some people are a bit more selective, usually ending up saying they like what he is doing, but worry about or plainly dislike his methods.

The result was what may be the most glorious presidential honeymoon ever, based on his assertion that his policies had a single objective – the triumph of MAGA.   If he intended to make America better, he deserved his chance. 

While his policies might succeed, each contained elements of its own failure.

On immigration, where he had promised not only to stop illegal entries but also to purge the country of non-naturalized foreigners, he picked low hanging fruit.  If a foreign student could easily be picked up off the street or an immigrant could be nailed at a citizenship interview, their expulsion would add to the numbers he wanted to achieve.

Clearly illegal entrants should be eligible for expulsion when apprehended.  Because they had violated the immigration law, they could be promptly tossed out, he thinks.  The constitutional right to due process, available to virtually all people, should be denied in such cases, his aides assert. They’re wrong; the president is not above the law, however inconvenient.

Tapping on the sentiment that government was both too big and too unresponsive, Trump loosed Elon Musk on it.  Reductions were not done surgically, but by a bulldozer.  The victims included science, foreign aid, public health and the poor.  The savings are relatively small, but grossly inflated for the media, and were done without following legal procedures.

Both immigration and government cuts face a myriad of court challenges.  Trump may count on courts stacked with conservatives to approve his extraordinary assertion of presidential powers.  He may face a constitutional conflict with judges.

On trade, he claimed that huge tariff increases should produce stunning results:  reduced imports, increased U.S. manufacturing and jobs, no price increases and acquiescence by America’s trading partners and allies.  He seems to have been right on imports, but possibly on no other assertion.

To be sure, he will have some wins from his drastic government cuts and his tax reductions and from backing off somewhat on tariffs.  But many of his moves harm constituencies he needed to win, and the question is how they will react in next year’s congressional elections.

However controversial, his ability to act by presidential decree should continue, at least until the Supreme Court limits his discretion.  Whether the Court does so, remains uncertain.

His free pass has been due to the almost total loyalty of congressional Republicans.  They seem to accept his electoral win across the country as a mandate for the kind of presidential power he wields.  They may fear his retaliation or agree with the trend toward authoritarian rule.  To succeed, he must be able to count on the submissiveness of the GOP.

Significantly, he may have to begin worrying about them.  For the first time, they blocked him.  His nominee for U.S. Attorney in D.C. failed because a single GOP senator opposed the appointment and was not overridden by the Majority Leader, who could have allowed a floor vote.

But one key factor may make Trump politically vulnerable.  More than any president before him, perhaps more than all of them together, Trump uses the presidency for personal enrichment.

He proposes to accept a $400 million free airplane from Qatar for use as Air Force One.  He believes he deserves more luxury, and he impatiently awaits Boeing’s delayed American made model.  Later, his administration would transfer the aircraft to his presidential library, so he might continue using it.  In short, Qatar is giving him a personal gift.

The violation of the constitutional ban on accepting such gifts is hard to ignore.  Qatar is buying influence.  He may count on the possibility of no judicial remedy beyond impeachment and conviction.

To make the plane electronically secure would cost taxpayers hundreds of millions.  And what about the duplicate plane that is needed to foil potential attackers and serve as a backup?  Boeing is contracted for two planes.

Add to this other Trump family profit-making activities. The promotion of his bitcoin business could give foreign interests access to him and perhaps a guided White House visit. What’s in it for the U.S.?  Or his sons promoting his businesses in Qatar and other places where he might trade U.S. policy for lucrative favors?

If the Democrats become more adept campaigners than they have been, they could make an issue of this potential corruption.  Even if they like his policies, the GOP might have a hard time justifying Trump’s self-enrichment, and some have already expressed serious concern. 

Meanwhile, public opinion polls reveal that his first 100 days were a political flop, comparing badly with his predecessors’ early showings.  He may be losing political clout, perhaps providing little help to the GOP in next year’s elections.

To paraphrase Churchill, this may not be the end of his presidential honeymoon or even the beginning of the end, but it could be the end of the beginning.

Trump's trade policy fades; tariffs come up short

 

Gordon L. Weil

American exports should be greater than American imports worldwide and for every country.  That’s the essence of President Trump’s tariff policy. 

To the extent that any country has a positive trade balance with the U.S., it is “robbing” the U.S.  To fix the imbalance, the U.S. now imposes tariffs or threatens to use them on imports to make them so expensive that American producers, with higher costs, can compete.

Even taking this policy at its face value, it is a failure.

Trump has squeezed other countries to force them to the negotiating table where they should make concessions to get him to back off the tariffs.  The signs are that he will achieve a lot less than he set out to get.  And neither side may be better off.

Two talks last week revealed that his policy was not working.  Meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, Trump said that the U.S. did not need his country’s exports, asserting that America could be self-sufficient.  Carney, an experienced negotiator, avoided debating the point, but merely noted that Canada is the biggest customer in the world for U.S. exports.

Trump is so focused on the trade balance in goods that he ignored exports and the favorable U.S. balance in services or his country’s reliance on Canadian oil, uranium and other essential goods. He failed to recognize that many products, like automobiles, are truly international, making it impossible to label them as coming from a single source.

After Trump again grandstanded about his desire to make Canada the 51st state and Carney’s understandable rejection, the two sides retired to begin closed, substantive talks going beyond scoring on one another.  In effect, Trump recognized that he needs a deal, which Carney already knew.

The second event was the announcement of a trade deal with the U.K.  Ever since Brexit, the Brits have sought a comprehensive trade arrangement, possibly a free trade deal, with the U.S., to compensate somewhat for losing Europe.  But the U.S. has had a favorable trade balance with Britain, giving it no reason to make a major deal.

That changed.  Trump needed an early trade deal to justify his tariff policy.  British Prime Minister Keir Starmer needed an accord to show the U.K. still has a special relationship with the U.S., and that the Labour Party could bring home a trade deal responding to some of Britain’s hopes.  Both leaders congratulated themselves on making a long sought after deal.

That may have been good politics for each of them, but it wasn’t true.  The deal removed some of the trade measures that Trump had applied to the U.K. without justification, but the Financial Times, a leading British newspaper, noted that it still left the U.K. worse off than it had been before Trump returned to office.

A deal with China really could matter, and both sides need it.  Trump looked anxious in claiming prematurely that talks with Beijing were under way, when at best contacts took place about starting talks.  At last, they have begun.  With China, the president’s tariff policy might produce results, though whether China keeps its promises would remain in doubt.

Overall, the Trump tariff policy is failing.  Originally focused solely on imports of goods, the policy missed the effects on domestic prices, access to essential imports, American exports as other countries retaliated, and the trade-stopping effects of astronomic tariff rates.  He now seems to begin to understand the implications of his one-note trade policy.

But his performance in talks with Carney and Starmer suggests he can’t adjust his demands.  Better qualified negotiators try to save the appearance of his claims, while making realistic arrangements.  One result is that the British deal is not a comprehensive pact, but simply covers specific items, with many details left to be completed.

Not only is his high tariff policy fading into face-saving pacts limited to a few products, but Trump himself seems to be fading.  What should have been said about Joe Biden as his term wore on, seems to be increasingly true for Trump. He restates broad themes, but lacks the energy or grasp of details to go further.  He leaves that to others.

When asked what the Declaration of Independence, posted on his office wall meant to him, he said it was a declaration about “unity and love” when it was about rebellion and anger.  When describing the U.K. trade deal, he read from prepared written remarks, possibly for the first time, showing no sign of understanding the deal.

He continues to ring the chimes for his key policies: mass deportation of illegal immigrants, stopping other countries from “robbing” the U.S., and slashing the federal government.  The question arises if he is capable of making these policies work as they face growing opposition.

 

 

Does Trump support the Constitution?

Gordon L. Weil

About 240 years ago, two major documents were committed to print.  Both were landmarks and both have been the object of interpretation and evolution.  

One is the U.S. Constitution. The other is Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 21, a major classical work.  A recent New York Times commentary offered a compelling analysis of what they have in common.

Both must be taken literally: read the words, play the notes.  But much has changed since they were written.  Tastes have changed, the halls of Congress and concert halls have changed, and, above all, American presidents and orchestra conductors have changed.   Within the limits of what was written, there’s room for different interpretations and styles.

The Civil War, the Great Depression, World War II, the Vietnam War, and Supreme Court rulings have all affected the terms and underlying assumptions of the Constitution.  The relative balance of powers between the state and federal governments and between the president and Congress have evolved.

The original drafters understood that the future interpretations of the Constitution inevitably would have to recognize the effects of changes that they could not envisage.  For them, the essence must be preserved: protecting people from the government as provided in the Bill of Rights, the balance of power and individual liberty.

Originalists, like Justice Clarence Thomas, believe that the terms of the Constitution must be interpreted as they were understood when it was written. They assume that the Framers’ thinking embodied almost godlike wisdom that could endure and could apply unchanged to any later turns of history.

An alternate view, probably held by the Framers themselves, would be that the principles were permanent, but just as the world evolved, so would the “living Constitution.”  The challenge for courts would not only be to recognize change, but how the Framers’ views would have evolved on how it should be applied in the new world.

In interpreting Mozart’s concerto, to play it loud or soft, fast or slow is the conductor’s job.  In American government, the job is shared by the three branches of the government.  Increasingly, however, the president has become the conductor of the music of the Constitution.  But, even if a president may alter the tempo and emphasis, they cannot change the tune.

When a person assumes the presidency, the Constitution prescribes the exact commitment they are taking – to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”  The Constitution requires every office holder down to the local elected official to make the same commitment.  It is an American loyalty oath for those exercising the public trust.

This commitment is necessary, because “absolute power corrupts.”   To avoid the public trust expresed in elections becoming the path to authoritarian rule, as happened in Germany in 1933, the commitment both reminds the new officeholder that they are bound by a written code and requires them to publicly acknowledge their acceptance.

When asked if he supported the Constitution, President Trump, a man who proclaims his own unusually good memory, forgot the commitment he undertook only 100 days earlier.  “I don’t know,” he said.  Really?  Or was he merely trying to give himself enough scope to be able the change the constitutional tune.

He finds one key requirement cannot be observed in pursuing his policy of mass deportation of illegal immigrants.  All persons, not only citizens, have the right to due process of law before the government takes action against them.  That means they must be able to answer the government’s charge and have the complaint and their defense judged by a neutral party.

Trump says that providing due process to the millions he wants to eject would be impossible.  He wants the Constitution to give absolute power to him, because he won a presidential election.  If due process for millions is impossible, then Trump’s policy, not the Constitution, must give way.  That’s the meaning of the obligation to protect and defend the founding document.

He counts on his electoral majority to carry the great weight.  Behind this view may be the “two-tier theory” of the law.  As the law applies to ordinary life, in matters from divorce to crime to contracts, nothing changes.  Most people see no change in their lives and will accept the other tier that gives the president powers unchecked by law.

Ultimately, the issue is likely to be determined by the Supreme Court, perhaps within a couple of months.  Trump claims the automatic right to citizenship at birth in the U.S., found in the Fourteenth Amendment, has limits, allowing mass deportation of “birthright” citizens.  In 1898, the Supreme Court said the right was unconditional.  The text and legislative history were clear.

If the Court ends up agreeing with Trump’s new interpretation, the Constitution would no longer protect people from the government of the day.   The music would end. 

Is America 'a house divided against itself'?

 

Gordon L. Weil

The other day, as I was leaving Lowe’s, a store that offers a veteran’s discount that I use, the checkout person called after me, “I love my veterans.”

She didn’t know if I was a Republican or Democrat or where I stood in the great political divide. I simply belong to a group of people who had given up some time and effort to their country. That group of people have a sense of belonging.  It’s real; fellow veterans share it.

A recent essay in the New York Times focuses on belonging as one of the essential benefits of religious affiliation.  The author states: “People need to be in strong communities to flourish, defined as being in a state where all aspects of their lives are good.” 

Another essay, this time in the Washington Post, pays tribute to the practice of ICE personnel saying, “Welcome home,” to citizens returning from travel abroad.  That welcome extends to anybody with a U.S. passport, regardless of their political affiliation or membership in any ethnic group.  The author found no other country where people get that greeting.

The author writes that this greeting is about “what makes America distinctive in the first place.

“America is the rare nation that is built on an idea rather than blood or soil. Our belonging, as Americans, isn’t predetermined by ancestry but secured through a commitment to certain universal principles — freedom, equality and the radical notion that citizens create their own government rather than the other way around.”

The sense of belonging matters to most, if not all, people.

And what matters about belonging is its emphasis on what people share, no matter how much they may differ on issues, even important issues.  Differences, which are inevitable, should not be allowed to go so far that they destroy the common sense of belonging.

But sometimes they do.  Some people use their power, a feature of life that is inevitably temporary, to force others to adhere to their views and demands.  They would simply override that common sense of belonging.

The alternative is not simply to let each person pursue their own beliefs and values.  To libertarians, that may seem to be all right so long as you don’t tread on someone else’s values. Increasingly, people try to impose their personal beliefs on others.  In the end, everybody lives in the same house, so nobody should be allowed to go so far as to destroy the house.  

The problem in modern American politics is the attempt of any one group to dominate. It is embodied in the famous football quote, mistakenly attributed to Vince Lombardi: “Winning isn’t everything; it’s the only thing.”

Winning is neither everything nor the only thing.  Not for everybody.

With his prompt acceptance of a Supreme Court decision that he did not win the presidency in 2000, Al Gore placed his belonging to the country ahead of himself.  With his dogged refusal to accept that he did not win the presidency in 2020, Donald Trump placed himself ahead of belonging to the country.

This column may sound like a sermon, but it’s meant as a political observation.  If we continue to act as if implacable divisiveness is inevitable, allowing it to prevent compromise and to overwhelm our common sense of belonging, the U.S. again becomes, as Lincoln saw it, “a house divided against itself.”  He warned that such a house “cannot stand.”

 

All power to the president: the 2026 budget

 

Gordon L. Weil

“I know nothing about Project 2025,” Trump said during the 2024 campaign.  For a person who knew nothing, he went on to assert, “I disagree with some of the things they’re saying and some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal.” 

Either he was dissembling or he is a quick learner.  He named Russell Vought, chief architect of Project 2025, to head the Office of Management and Budget, and Vought has just issued Trump’s proposed 2026 budget. Project 2025 permeates it.  With a straight face, Vought says it’s pure Trump.  It’s a chicken-or-egg proposition. Which plan came first, Trump’s or Project 2025?

Vought just sent the budget to Senate Appropriations Committee chair Susan Collins.  She promptly found a lot wrong with it.  That’s not surprising, because most presidential budgets are not adopted by Congress.  Members favor appropriations that help them win elections, so their priorities differ from the president’s.

The budget reveals the essential elements of Trump’s thinking about government.  It confirms virtually everything included in his torrent of executive orders.  It formally recognizes that Congress decides federal spending, but really expects it to issue a seal of approval on what he has already done without its approval.

Any change in the proposed budget is accompanied by a note explaining the reasoning behind the subtraction or addition.  In some cases, the statement is anecdotal, with a general policy growing out of a single person’s experience or opinion.

Here are seven keys to the proposed budget.

1.  It is aimed at eliminating whatever Joe Biden did.  It reads less like a proposal for funding the appropriate priorities for the U.S., and more like a campaign manifesto.  It would reshape the government, which Vought sees as socialist, but instead of looking forward, it keeps looking backward.  Pointless, since Biden won’t be back.

2.  It’s based on the theory that because he won the election, Congress should leave policy to him. The budget focuses on carrying out President Trump’s aims, providing Congress with a checklist of items to approve. 

This may constitute progress.  At least, instead of government by executive order, it recognizes the need for congressional action.  Still, the underlying assumption of presidential policy supremacy is far from the Constitution that says Congress (Article I) makes policy and the president (Article II) executes it.

3. Congress should transfer legislative power to the president.  Many items in the proposed budget would give the president power to legislate through executive orders.  That could eliminate court challenges, which now claim Trump has exceeded the powers given him by law.  No more fighting about executive orders, he implies, just authorize them.

Here’s an example. Should Congress decide on U.S. participation in the United Nations? Not here. The budget would create a $2.9 billion America First Opportunity Fund.  Foreign policy and UN dues would be paid out of this fund, entirely at Trump’s discretion.  It could become a tool for his “art of the deal.”

4.  Trump gets revenge.  Trump defunds what he sees as hostile agencies. The budget would cut $18 billion from the National Institutes for Health, punishing the agencies for having failed to agree with him on the origins of Covid-19.   The FBI is severely cut, paying for having investigated him.  But Homeland Security gets almost $44 billion more to build the Wall and keep mass removals growing.

5. The crusade against “woke” continues.  Any activity that even faintly looks like help for any group that has suffered from discrimination must go.  In some cases, the host agency itself is also swept away.

6.  Much health care and scientific research disappears.  But Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy gets $500 million for “Make America Healthy Again.”  When was America healthy?  The amount seems to be a round number without a cost basis.

7. The bipartisan deal balancing military and non-military discretionary outlays is gone.  Now non-military, like health, education and low-income help would be cut by $163 billion, more than one-fifth, while military spending breaks the trillion-dollar level.  Even then, GOP senators think that Trump did not go far enough.

Many of these Trump priorities are likely to make it into the final budget.  That will create challenges for targeted states and individuals, plus Republicans in toss-up districts, and Democrats who want to find a way to take control of Congress.

This is Trump’s budget, thanks to Project 2025. The first question is whether congressional Republicans will endorse it or retake legislative control of their party’s agenda. 

But it also challenges the Democrats to come up with their own budget.  Their choice goes beyond taking potshots at the budget. They could come up with a comprehensive alternative. Both parties could seek compromise, thanks to the cooperative relationship between Collins and Sen. Patty Murray, the Democratic committee vice chair.

 

Antisemitism, the latest wedge issue

Gordon L. Weil

In his 100-day whirlwind, President Trump has transformed a public concern into a mega-wedge issue.  It’s antisemitism.

He uses charges of antisemitism to attack institutions and show his support for Israel.  While antisemitism is real and historic, Trump exploits it to drive a political wedge that could bring him added support, based on his position on this single issue.

The 2023 Hamas attack on Israel provided the fuel for his policy.  Most of the world was shocked by the brutal raid, killing and kidnapping and agreed that Israel was entitled to act to prevent any recurrence.  The unchecked power of Hamas had to be ended.  Jews across the world joined in this sentiment.

In its retaliation and counterattack, Israel not only went after Hamas but also hit innocent Palestinians, first in Gaza and then on the West Bank, presumably to undermine any possible support for Hamas.  Israel appears to leverage its Hamas response to repress or expel Palestinians, so it can ultimately exercise total control over the former territory of Palestine.

Just as great sympathy had been shown for Israelis in the wake of the Hamas attack, sympathy also emerged for the many Palestinians, not Hamas activists, who saw their families, homes, and hospitals devastated.  Some worried about the fate of the Palestinians, though among them were those who went overboard and backed Hamas.

This is the point where U.S. antisemitism became an issue. 

With the second largest Jewish population in the world, the politics of this issue divide American Jews. They all continue to be concerned about their survival as a small minority among the world’s billions, but they disagree on the current events in the Middle East.

For some, support for Israel, a Jewish state, is essential to their beliefs, making it a large part of how they define themselves as Jews.  Their support for Israel readily translates into support for any actions taken by the Israeli government under Netanyahu.  In short, backing the Israeli government, no matter what it does, has become an integral part of their faith.

Other American Jews base their faith less on Israel and more on their traditions and shared values.  While they support Israel’s existence, they focus on protecting and improving the lives of others.  In recent decades, this has become frequently expressed as a duty to “repair the world.”  That belief can lead to opposition to Israel’s aggressive, sometimes brutal, tactics.

Trump agrees with the pro-Netanyahu hard-right views.  Jews and others who oppose Israel’s repression of the Palestinians are labelled as being self-hating or antisemitic. 

Trump may exploit antisemitism as a way of gaining support in the Jewish community, which has usually voted strongly Democratic.  This is what happened in the recent Canadian elections, when a Trump-like Conservative picked up some traditional Liberal Party supporters. He also appeals to Christian conservatives, who see Israel’s existence as central to their own beliefs. 

Labeling opposition to the Israeli government and showing support for non-violent Palestinians as antisemitism dismisses deeply held beliefs in the Jewish community.  Those who express these views, even Jews, become targets for political retaliation and may threaten their freedom of speech.

Anti-Arab militants, whether for racist or political reasons, claim that supporters of beleaguered Palestinians are antisemitic.  That makes it impossible for a person either to see some merit on both sides or to reject both sides. 

For people who want to suppress Arabs, the Israeli government has become the authority on who is a good Jew, defined as those who share that view.  To be clear, Israel cannot “excommunicate” a Jew.  That is an individual’s decision.

Trump’s allies in Congress could deem criticism of Israel virtually illegal through a definition of antisemitism in proposed new legislation.   They are forcing Jewish members of Congress to face a choice between backing Trump and seeming to be indifferent to antisemitism.

“We are witnessing the co-opting of the fight against antisemitism to pursue unrelated, authoritarian goals by the Trump Administration, and the so-called Antisemitism Awareness Act will give them another tool,” wrote one leader of a Jewish group opposing the bill.  “Antisemitism is a serious problem,” he said, “but this legislation combined with the current administration’s actions aren’t making Jewish Americans any safer.”

By politicizing antisemitism, Trump may make the situation worse.  He increases an unwanted focus on American Jews and adds to national divisiveness.  He uses this policy to attack institutions that foster free speech and open debate.  Is it wise to end funding for some of the world’s best scientific research, because a university administration badly handled a campus protest?

Trump has taken extreme action in withholding federal funding to kill “woke” efforts to promote diversity, equity and inclusion for some groups.  But his singular and favored focus on antisemitism makes it appear that for one group, he, too, is “woke.”

 

 

  

Canadian voting system has lessons for U.S.

 

Gordon L. Weil

The Canadian national elections were conducted on Monday, and the winner was known early on Tuesday, within 12 hours of the polls closing.

It was an exciting and close election, thanks significantly to the Trump threat to attempt annexing the entire country as the 51st American state.  The winner, Liberal Party leader Mark Carney, benefitted from his vigorous opposition to Trump.

There are key differences between the Canadian and American political systems.  Elections to Parliament determine who will be Prime Minister.  It’s as though there’s a national vote in each riding (the Canadian term for a district), and the party that wins the most ridings gets to name the Prime Minister. 

Even with that major difference from U.S. presidential elections, some of the ways Canadians conduct elections could improve the American procedures and reduce the opportunity for post-voting disputes.

Here are some elements of the Canadian system that could help in the U.S.

1. Before voting, each voter must state their name and address and either produce a government-issued ID or make a sworn statement, subject to verification and penalty in case of a false statement.

2. There are many ballot boxes and on average, less than 300 votes are deposited in each one.  That can make counting the vote easier and quicker.

3. All voting is by paper ballot.  There are no voting machines. Though the labor cost to process votes may be greater than in the U.S., the cost of machines and their vulnerability to manipulation or error is avoided.

4. Election officials open the ballot boxes in public and display to observers each ballot as it is counted. This reduces the chance for election fraud.  The election officers tally the results by ballot box, which is then sealed.  It is later transferred to the central election administrator.

5. The ballot box results are aggregated by riding to determine the outcome and the exact vote in each one.  The running total is transmitted to a federal elections officer.  Results are made public as they are counted and added together.  When all votes in a riding are counted, a member of parliament is elected.    In the U.S., the parallel would be the aggregation of the raw vote by congressional district and transmission of the results to a state election official who would determine the state’s presidential vote winner (or winners in the cases of Maine and Nebraska).

6. Parliamentary voting takes place without any other issue or candidate voting occurring at the same time.  That is not possible in the U.S., but a similar result could be achieved by completing a tally of presidential votes (or perhaps congressional votes in midterm elections) before any other votes begin to be counted.

7. Courts ultimately have the authority to settle promptly disputes about how the procedure is carried out and any challenges.

In Canada, the election is under ultimate federal control, while the U.S. states run elections.  To adopt any part of the Canadian system would require action by states or national action by Congress to the extent allowed by the Constitution.

The number of voters and the use of ranked-choice voting in some states might seem to make the adoption of the Canadian procedures difficult.  Overcoming the added complexity can be resolved through technology.  In ranked-choice voting, the need for a central recount, the principal cause of delay, could be eliminated.

American elections have come under criticism because counting takes much time, results become public slowly and procedures create opportunities for challenge and claims of fraud. Adoption of at least some of the Canadian methods offers the possibility of overcoming or reducing these issues.