At the heart of President-elect Donald J. Trump’s threat on Monday to slap China with new tariffs is a bitterly recurring issue: the flow into the United States of the potent opioid fentanyl, created using chemicals made in China.
But cooperation on fentanyl — to some degree, at least — between the countries has already been happening, making it one of the few issues left that the two superpower rivals have been able to make progress on.
In September, Chinese officials expanded the list of so-called precursor chemicals used in making the drug, imposing more oversight. The move was the result of renewed bilateral talks on narcotics that started after President Biden and China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, met in Woodside, Calif., a year ago.
It was a rare instance of cooperation from China, which has otherwise stonewalled the United States on issues including nuclear arms control, support for Russia and human rights. China is the main source of chemicals used to make fentanyl, a synthetic opioid that kills tens of thousands of Americans a year. Much of the flow into the United States is from drug cartels in Mexico who mix the precursors and smuggle the finished product across the border.
Despite the recent momentum, experts have warned that much still needed to be done. Chinese producers of fentanyl ingredients, which are also used to produce legal pharmaceutical drugs, can circumvent laws by developing new uncontrolled precursor chemicals. Experts at the Council on Foreign Relations say that Chinese and U.S. law enforcement officials need to work together more closely, and that China needs to provide the United States with more support in anti-money laundering efforts to block the flow of illicit money funding the trade.
Some analysts were concerned that tariffs might hurt that effort more than help it.
“An imposition of tariffs is not going to do anything regarding the flow of fentanyl,” said Vanda Felbab-Brown, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and an expert on global drug policy. “In fact, it might undermine the counternarcotics cooperation that the U.S. and China have been doing in 2024 and that came after no cooperation for over two years.”
Chinese officials have tended to use the fentanyl issue as leverage over the United States, cooperating only when they receive something in return.
To restart talks on narcotics after Mr. Biden and Mr. Xi met in California, Washington agreed to Beijing’s demand that U.S. sanctions be lifted on a forensics institute run by China’s Ministry of Public Security. The institute was placed on a trade blacklist in 2020 because it was linked to abuses against ethnic minorities in China, particularly the Uyghurs. The Biden administration said the move was justified because China had shut down some companies exporting fentanyl precursors and closed their bank accounts.
“If the United States wants to get more cooperation from China on the domestic fentanyl issue, it should seek China’s support in a constructive way instead of using unilateral, punitive measures to force China to make concessions,” said Song Guoyou, an American studies expert at Fudan University in Shanghai.
This is not the first time that China has agreed to help crack down on fentanyl. In 2019, Beijing introduced a ban of the drug, leading the Trump administration to thank Mr. Xi for what it called “a wonderful humanitarian gesture.” Chinese and American law enforcement agents also began coordinating efforts to catch traffickers. But tensions over technology and trade, and the shooting down of a Chinese surveillance balloon over the United States, soon put an end to cooperation.
China has long deflected blame for America’s fentanyl crisis, saying the fault lies with U.S. government policies. It also casts itself as a victim of drugs, pointing to Britain’s exploitative opium trade during the 19th century.
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