President Donald Trump spent this week changing tack on trade tariffs, citing fentanyl as his motivational push to punish China, Canada and Mexico, before turning back on some of those threats.
Trump extended his blanket tariff on Chinese goods to 20 percent this week, citing Chinese exports of illicit fentanyl as justification. The president also slapped 25 percent tariffs on Canada and Mexico, only to ease some of them temporarily on Thursday.
The White House said Chinese officials have “failed” to stem the flow of precursor chemicals, used to make fentanyl, to criminal cartels, claimed Mexican drug trafficking organizations have an “intolerable alliance” with Mexico’s government, and that Canda had a “growing footprint” in international narcotics distribution.
While the fentanyl seizures at the southern border remain high, China’s role in America’s fentanyl crisis is more complex, as Newsweek found.
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China and Fentanyl
Trump said in his executive order raising Chinese tariffs to 20 percent that the Chinese government failed to blunt the flow of fentanyl and synthetic opioids.
While China was a major exporter of fentanyl about 10 years ago, the drug was scheduled by the Chinese government in 2019, meaning it faced stricter regulations before it was sold and shipped.
However, Chinese exports of chemical precursor ingredients from which the drug is made have earned attention in recent years. In April 2024, the House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party said China was the “ultimate geographic source” of the fentanyl crisis and that companies in China produced nearly all fentanyl precursors that are the key ingredients used to create fentanyl.
A 2021 report by the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, an independent U.S. government agency, said that in the first eight months of 2019, as the drug in all its forms was scheduled by China, U.S. Customs and Border Protection seized less than 12 pounds in direct shipment from China, down from 278 pounds in 2018.
In a recent Brookings Institution podcast, Vanda Felbab-Brown, a drug policy expert and senior fellow at Brookings, argued that China expected that the scheduling of fentanyl in 2019 would lead to benefits, such as a relaxation of tariffs imposed under the Trump administration. But, as tariffs remained under Biden, and as counter-Chinese U.S. alliances in East Asia increased, China pulled back on cooperative policy interaction.
“And so, then we have another year of really nothing where fentanyl precursors are leaving China and going to Mexican cartels,” Felbab-Brown said. “The Chinese criminal networks know they’re selling to the cartels. They often accompany the precursors with recipes. This is how you take this precursor, scheduled or not, and this is how you make fentanyl out of it. And this is the best way to make fentanyl out of it.
“They advertise on their websites we know how to evade Mexican customs controls. And there is essentially unhampered criminal activity taking place in China without the Chinese government trying to crack down on it.”
A report released in May 2024 by the Drug Enforcement Administration detailed how dark web marketplaces, shady shipping practices, cryptocurrency payments, encrypted messaging and expert intermediaries were used to facilitate deliveries of precursors.
However, a thaw in U.S.-China relations around late 2023 led to new policing and regulation of fentanyl precursors, with the nations launching a “resumption” of efforts to combat synthetic drug trafficking in January 2024. By August 2024, China had scheduled three fentanyl precursors, a move the Biden administration called a “valuable step forward.”
There have been prosecutions since. In November 2024, a joint investigation in Los Angeles led to charges at a chemical company in Wuhan, China, including the arrest of a director and three senior employees over allegations the company sold fentanyl precursor. In a multi-agency effort, Chinese and American authorities made arrests as China’s Ministry of Public Security dissolved the company.
China’s changes were noted in a paper published this week by the United Nations‘ International Narcotics Control Board (INCB), which reported on China’s regulatory changes and cooperation with international efforts to limit precursor trafficking.
There is still a lack of hard data to measure China’s ongoing efforts. For example, while in 2023 the United States reported notable seizures of fentanyl precursors under international scheduling, the U.S. did not state its precursor origins. China also provided no data to the INCB on seizures of regulated fentanyl precursors between 2020 and 2023.
The report also recognized that international regulation had not eliminated the trade of fentanyl precursors, noting U.S. seizures of more than 650 kilos of precursors not under international control in 2023.
With only relatively recent cooperation and gaps in the measurability and enforcement of Chinese precursor trafficking, the Trump administration, eager to expand its tariff agenda, may have found an easy pain point here.
Tariff War and China
Unlike Mexico and Canada, the White House has not eased its tariff strategy for China. In an executive order released in February, Trump accused the Chinese Communist Party of subsidizing or otherwise incentivizing chemical companies to export fentanyl and related precursor chemicals.
China has rejected the U.S. claim of inaction. Beijing insists it has stepped up its crackdown on fentanyl precursor production since the 2023 summit between then-President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping.
“The fentanyl issue is a flimsy excuse to raise U.S. tariffs on Chinese imports. China has made clear its opposition more than once,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian told reporters Tuesday. The U.S., “not anyone else,” is to blame for the drug crisis within its own borders, he added.
Lin warned that “bullying” is the wrong approach to take toward China.
“If the U.S. has other agendas in mind and if war is what the U.S. wants—be it a tariff war, a trade war, or any other type of war—we’re ready to fight till the end.”