Donald Trump’s new trade war on China is also an opioid war
The president claims that drugs are poisoning geopolitics
President Donald Trump has long threatened to launch a trade war but the one he began on February 1st against Canada, China and Mexico is tangled with furious accusations about another war: the one on drugs. His executive orders state that Canada and Mexico are failing to control the flow of narcotics and migrants across their borders, and partly justify America’s 25% tariff on them as a punitive response, using the International Emergency Economic Powers act of 1977.
But Mr Trump’s most incendiary claims are reserved for China. The Communist Party, he says, “has subsidised and otherwise incentivised” Chinese firms to “export fentanyl and related precursor chemicals that are used to produce synthetic opioids sold illicitly in the United States”. China “provides support to and safe haven for” transnational criminal organisations.
As a result Mr Trump has imposed a further 10% tariffs on Chinese goods. The executive orders also limit the scope of so-called de-minimis exemptions from duties for small packages sent across borders: this will badly hurt Chinese e-commerce firms that sell into America. China has responded by saying it will contest the tariffs through the World Trade Organisation, a threat unlikely to intimidate Mr Trump, but more action from the People’s Republic is likely.
Mr Trump’s claims about the opioid trade are hyperbolic, and his remedy counterproductive, but there is little doubt the synthetic drugs trade is a problem and that China could do more. The death toll is horrific. By official reckoning nearly 90,000 Americans died from drug overdoses, mainly involving fentanyl, in the year to August 2024. On January 17th Mr Trump spoke to his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, for the first time since his election victory. Listing the topics that he raised with Mr Xi, America’s trade deficit with China and fentanyl came first. He sounded optimistic: “It is my expectation that we will solve many problems together, and starting immediately,” he wrote on social media. But on January 21st, a day after his inauguration, Mr Trump put it more bluntly. He said he had told Mr Xi that “we don’t want that crap in our country. We got to stop it.”
China and Mexico play big roles in the fentanyl crisis. Chinese firms are the main suppliers of chemicals that are “cooked” into fentanyl by cartels in Mexico and smuggled into America. Mr Trump is wrong, however, to suggest that “massive” amounts of fentanyl have been coming in from Canada. In 2024 about 9.6 tonnes of the drug were seized on America’s south-western border. Less than 20kg were discovered being brought from the north.
Chinese companies are not exporting fentanyl in significant quantities. Their shipments are chiefly of “precursors” and “pre-precursors”—the drug’s main ingredients and those needed to make them. Mr Trump has attempted to put some of the blame on Mr Biden, whom he accuses of failing to chivvy Mr Xi into fulfilling a promise that Mr Trump says the Chinese leader made during Mr Trump’s first term—namely that China would execute people for sending fentanyl to America. “That would have stopped it,” he told reporters on January 23rd. “But we’ll have to stop it with tariffs.”
China has not confirmed any such pledge. And death sentences would not have helped. China did crack down on fentanyl. In 2019 it banned unauthorised manufacture of all fentanyl-type opioids. That year, after a rare joint investigation involving both Chinese and American agencies, a Chinese court gave a man a suspended death sentence for trafficking fentanyl to America. Eight others were imprisoned for terms ranging from six months to life. But the tough approach merely encouraged chemical firms to export precursors instead. These often have legal uses as well as being building-blocks for fentanyl. Instead of mailing the drug directly to America, as had been the norm, Chinese firms began exporting the raw chemicals to the cartels.
The problem is partly political. China expected rewards for taking America’s concerns more seriously. It was outraged when the Trump administration imposed sanctions on the Ministry of Public Security’s forensic-science institute in 2020 because of its alleged links with the repression of ethnic Uyghurs in the far-western region of Xinjiang. China scaled back its (never very close) co-operation with America in fighting drug crime. In 2022, during the Biden administration, it severed such collaboration in response to a visit to Taiwan by Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House of Representatives. Co-operation only resumed after Mr Biden agreed to lift the sanctions in November 2023 during an ice-breaking summit in San Francisco with Mr Xi.
China’s help with fighting drugs is still far less productive than American politicians of all stripes would like. In January 2024 a new bilateral forum on counter-narcotics work met for the first time in Beijing. China took further steps to tighten its controls on opioid-related business. It shut down 14 websites and more than 1,000 online shops offering precursors for sale. In September 2023 it imposed restrictions on three more fentanyl ingredients. “As soon as something’s internationally agreed, they’ll control it. So I’ll give them credit for that,” says a senior official familiar with China’s efforts. “In some countries it takes a very long time for domestic regulations to catch up after international controls.”
But searches by The Economist for these and other fentanyl-related chemicals show that much remains to be done. Websites offering them still abound. If the sellers’ country of origin is not explicit, their contact details involving WeChat, a Chinese messaging platform, and Chinese mobile phone numbers, make the China connection clear. “Safety Delivery to Mexico, USA”, says a dealer on a chemical trading platform in Shanghai, purporting to be from a firm in Anhui province. The webpage advertises 1-boc-4-AP, one of the precursors that China took action against in 2024. It may be a scam. But in July 2024 Reuters, a news agency, said its reporters had secured air-freighted deliveries of precursors and a pill press from online sellers in China over the previous year. The products cost a total of about $3,600, and could have made 750,000 tablets of fentanyl worth about $3m, according to Reuters.
China has a massive arsenal of internet-control weaponry, and much expertise in using it. Its failure to deploy it fully against the fentanyl-related trade suggests that political will may be lacking. In April last year a bipartisan committee of America’s House of Representatives released a report on China’s connections with fentanyl. It noted that China routinely uses its security apparatus against drug traffickers, “but only in cases that impact its domestic population”. It said fentanyl was a “valuable rhetorical and propaganda tool” for China, enabling it to decry the “decadence” of Western democracies. In July a senior American official told reporters that the then Biden administration had no information to support the committee’s finding that China was actually subsidising precursor exports. But, the official said, “I think there’s a need for an ongoing conversation about that.”
Mr Trump’s imposition of an additional 10% tariff on Chinese goods (though less than the 25% slapped on Mexico and Canada) will not encourage China to talk. “The fentanyl crisis is a US issue,” said China’s foreign ministry, insisting the country’s controls on drugs are among the world’s toughest. It said China had been supporting American efforts to tackle the fentanyl crisis, achieving “notable results” and warned that the levies would “undermine future co-operation on drug control”.
But Vanda Felbab-Brown of the Brookings Institution in Washington believes America may have leverage. China is keen to be removed from an annual American list of major drug-producing and transit countries (it was added in 2023). It could be willing to take further steps to stop the opioid-related trade if America agrees to remove that label, Ms Felbab-Brown believes. “China is very focused on its reputation.”
Even with China’s best efforts, the problem will not disappear quickly. The country has a vast and nimble chemical industry that, along with India’s, dominates global supplies of pharmaceutical raw materials. Its manufacturers can quickly produce other suitable chemicals if the government restricts sales of a particular fentanyl component. Their legitimate uses, in addition to their fentanyl-making ones, would make any government hesitate to stop their production completely. China’s local governments have an interest in protecting businesses that prop-up sagging economic growth. And a tougher crackdown in China could push more of the business elsewhere, such as to India. On the supply side, whether in Mexico, China or other countries, fighting fentanyl will be a protracted struggle. In geopolitics, the poison will long persist.
Subscribers can sign up to Drum Tower, our new weekly newsletter, to understand what the world makes of China—and what China makes of the world.
President Donald Trump has long threatened to launch a trade war but the one he began on February 1st against Canada, China and Mexico is tangled with furious accusations about another war: the one on drugs. His executive orders state that Canada and Mexico are failing to control the flow of narcotics and migrants across their borders, and partly justify America’s 25% tariff on them as a punitive response, using the International Emergency Economic Powers act of 1977.
But Mr Trump’s most incendiary claims are reserved for China. The Communist Party, he says, “has subsidised and otherwise incentivised” Chinese firms to “export fentanyl and related precursor chemicals that are used to produce synthetic opioids sold illicitly in the United States”. China “provides support to and safe haven for” transnational criminal organisations.
As a result Mr Trump has imposed a further 10% tariffs on Chinese goods. The executive orders also limit the scope of so-called de-minimis exemptions from duties for small packages sent across borders: this will badly hurt Chinese e-commerce firms that sell into America. China has responded by saying it will contest the tariffs through the World Trade Organisation, a threat unlikely to intimidate Mr Trump, but more action from the People’s Republic is likely.
{{/usCountry}}As a result Mr Trump has imposed a further 10% tariffs on Chinese goods. The executive orders also limit the scope of so-called de-minimis exemptions from duties for small packages sent across borders: this will badly hurt Chinese e-commerce firms that sell into America. China has responded by saying it will contest the tariffs through the World Trade Organisation, a threat unlikely to intimidate Mr Trump, but more action from the People’s Republic is likely.
{{/usCountry}}Mr Trump’s claims about the opioid trade are hyperbolic, and his remedy counterproductive, but there is little doubt the synthetic drugs trade is a problem and that China could do more. The death toll is horrific. By official reckoning nearly 90,000 Americans died from drug overdoses, mainly involving fentanyl, in the year to August 2024. On January 17th Mr Trump spoke to his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, for the first time since his election victory. Listing the topics that he raised with Mr Xi, America’s trade deficit with China and fentanyl came first. He sounded optimistic: “It is my expectation that we will solve many problems together, and starting immediately,” he wrote on social media. But on January 21st, a day after his inauguration, Mr Trump put it more bluntly. He said he had told Mr Xi that “we don’t want that crap in our country. We got to stop it.”
China and Mexico play big roles in the fentanyl crisis. Chinese firms are the main suppliers of chemicals that are “cooked” into fentanyl by cartels in Mexico and smuggled into America. Mr Trump is wrong, however, to suggest that “massive” amounts of fentanyl have been coming in from Canada. In 2024 about 9.6 tonnes of the drug were seized on America’s south-western border. Less than 20kg were discovered being brought from the north.
Chinese companies are not exporting fentanyl in significant quantities. Their shipments are chiefly of “precursors” and “pre-precursors”—the drug’s main ingredients and those needed to make them. Mr Trump has attempted to put some of the blame on Mr Biden, whom he accuses of failing to chivvy Mr Xi into fulfilling a promise that Mr Trump says the Chinese leader made during Mr Trump’s first term—namely that China would execute people for sending fentanyl to America. “That would have stopped it,” he told reporters on January 23rd. “But we’ll have to stop it with tariffs.”
China has not confirmed any such pledge. And death sentences would not have helped. China did crack down on fentanyl. In 2019 it banned unauthorised manufacture of all fentanyl-type opioids. That year, after a rare joint investigation involving both Chinese and American agencies, a Chinese court gave a man a suspended death sentence for trafficking fentanyl to America. Eight others were imprisoned for terms ranging from six months to life. But the tough approach merely encouraged chemical firms to export precursors instead. These often have legal uses as well as being building-blocks for fentanyl. Instead of mailing the drug directly to America, as had been the norm, Chinese firms began exporting the raw chemicals to the cartels.
The problem is partly political. China expected rewards for taking America’s concerns more seriously. It was outraged when the Trump administration imposed sanctions on the Ministry of Public Security’s forensic-science institute in 2020 because of its alleged links with the repression of ethnic Uyghurs in the far-western region of Xinjiang. China scaled back its (never very close) co-operation with America in fighting drug crime. In 2022, during the Biden administration, it severed such collaboration in response to a visit to Taiwan by Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House of Representatives. Co-operation only resumed after Mr Biden agreed to lift the sanctions in November 2023 during an ice-breaking summit in San Francisco with Mr Xi.
China’s help with fighting drugs is still far less productive than American politicians of all stripes would like. In January 2024 a new bilateral forum on counter-narcotics work met for the first time in Beijing. China took further steps to tighten its controls on opioid-related business. It shut down 14 websites and more than 1,000 online shops offering precursors for sale. In September 2023 it imposed restrictions on three more fentanyl ingredients. “As soon as something’s internationally agreed, they’ll control it. So I’ll give them credit for that,” says a senior official familiar with China’s efforts. “In some countries it takes a very long time for domestic regulations to catch up after international controls.”
But searches by The Economist for these and other fentanyl-related chemicals show that much remains to be done. Websites offering them still abound. If the sellers’ country of origin is not explicit, their contact details involving WeChat, a Chinese messaging platform, and Chinese mobile phone numbers, make the China connection clear. “Safety Delivery to Mexico, USA”, says a dealer on a chemical trading platform in Shanghai, purporting to be from a firm in Anhui province. The webpage advertises 1-boc-4-AP, one of the precursors that China took action against in 2024. It may be a scam. But in July 2024 Reuters, a news agency, said its reporters had secured air-freighted deliveries of precursors and a pill press from online sellers in China over the previous year. The products cost a total of about $3,600, and could have made 750,000 tablets of fentanyl worth about $3m, according to Reuters.
China has a massive arsenal of internet-control weaponry, and much expertise in using it. Its failure to deploy it fully against the fentanyl-related trade suggests that political will may be lacking. In April last year a bipartisan committee of America’s House of Representatives released a report on China’s connections with fentanyl. It noted that China routinely uses its security apparatus against drug traffickers, “but only in cases that impact its domestic population”. It said fentanyl was a “valuable rhetorical and propaganda tool” for China, enabling it to decry the “decadence” of Western democracies. In July a senior American official told reporters that the then Biden administration had no information to support the committee’s finding that China was actually subsidising precursor exports. But, the official said, “I think there’s a need for an ongoing conversation about that.”
Mr Trump’s imposition of an additional 10% tariff on Chinese goods (though less than the 25% slapped on Mexico and Canada) will not encourage China to talk. “The fentanyl crisis is a US issue,” said China’s foreign ministry, insisting the country’s controls on drugs are among the world’s toughest. It said China had been supporting American efforts to tackle the fentanyl crisis, achieving “notable results” and warned that the levies would “undermine future co-operation on drug control”.
But Vanda Felbab-Brown of the Brookings Institution in Washington believes America may have leverage. China is keen to be removed from an annual American list of major drug-producing and transit countries (it was added in 2023). It could be willing to take further steps to stop the opioid-related trade if America agrees to remove that label, Ms Felbab-Brown believes. “China is very focused on its reputation.”
Even with China’s best efforts, the problem will not disappear quickly. The country has a vast and nimble chemical industry that, along with India’s, dominates global supplies of pharmaceutical raw materials. Its manufacturers can quickly produce other suitable chemicals if the government restricts sales of a particular fentanyl component. Their legitimate uses, in addition to their fentanyl-making ones, would make any government hesitate to stop their production completely. China’s local governments have an interest in protecting businesses that prop-up sagging economic growth. And a tougher crackdown in China could push more of the business elsewhere, such as to India. On the supply side, whether in Mexico, China or other countries, fighting fentanyl will be a protracted struggle. In geopolitics, the poison will long persist.
Subscribers can sign up to Drum Tower, our new weekly newsletter, to understand what the world makes of China—and what China makes of the world.
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