Will Trump’s trade war end America’s fentanyl crisis?

WASHINGTON – The motivation for President Donald Trump’s trade wars on friends and foes alike has an unlikely source: the fentanyl crisis in the United States.

One of the most lethal drug epidemics in human history, fentanyl has killed nearly one million Americans since the start of this century.

In scale, the crisis is comparable to China’s 19th-century opium crisis, where tens of millions were addicted to the drug. But the fentanyl crisis dwarfs the opium crisis in its sheer intensity.

While China’s crisis spiralled over a century, the fentanyl crisis has exploded in the US in just over two decades.

It is more than 50 times as powerful as heroin – just a 2mg dose of fentanyl can be fatal.

As a prescription drug, it is used to manage severe pain from cancer and other diseases. But it was overprescribed and abused for the euphoria it produces. An overdose results in respiratory failure, leading to death.

How China, Mexico and Canada are involved

Its supply and use have surged since 2012 when China emerged as the cheap and primary source of chemicals that go into making the synthetic drug.

The chemicals are processed into a deadly powder or pills by powerful Mexican cartels that sell it across the border in the US.

A much smaller proportion is smuggled in from Canada.

A kilogram of fentanyl can fit in a backpack and sell for millions of dollars on the street. Sometimes, drones or ultralight aircraft are used on drug runs.

During the epidemic’s worst two years, 2021 and 2022, more than 100,000 people in the US died in each of those years from overdoses. In 2024, these deaths stood at over 86,000. Four in 10 American adults say they know someone who died of an overdose, according to a study. The coast-to-coast crisis has devastated families and communities, taking a heavy toll on the economy too.

Mr Trump placed fentanyl trafficking at the centre of foreign and economic policy, issuing a series of executive orders in February and March to impose a 20 per cent tariff on goods from China and

25 per cent on goods from Mexico and Canada

until these nations stop the flow of fentanyl. He also designated drug cartels as foreign terrorist organisations and announced that military strikes could be launched against them on Mexican soil.

His strategy marks a sharp departure from his predecessor Joe Biden, who treated it mainly as a public health crisis, stepping up treatment and addiction programmes and educational campaigns, which appear to have reduced overdose deaths.

Is it sustainable for Mexico?

Mr Trump has seen some early success. On Feb 28, Mexico extradited 29 drug cartel members to the US, including Rafael Caro Quintero, a cartel kingpin charged in the US with the 1985 brutal killing of US agent Enrique Camarena, on whom the first season of Netflix series Narcos: Mexico is based.

The tariffs do create leverage with the Mexican government that was not there during the Biden administration, said Dr Vanda Felbab-Brown at the Brookings Institution, where she directs the Initiative on Nonstate Armed Actors.

“We have seen the Mexican government already responding in ways that they hadn’t before, such as handing over the top 29 drug traffickers they had imprisoned,” said Dr Felbab-Brown, author of several books on drug wars, organised crime and illicit economies.

“You have also seen the Mexican government checking vehicles heading north to the US, something they would not be doing diligently before, and deploying an additional 10,000 Mexican troops to the border,” she said.

“But in the long term, they will not be able to sustain this policy. It’s simply too resource-intensive, and it slows down legal trade too much,” she pointed out.

And the other component of Mr Trump’s plan – to conduct strikes against the cartels on Mexican soil – could prematurely end the cooperation altogether, as it would weaken President Claudia Sheinbaum, who has staked political capital on such efforts.

“The military air strikes into Mexico, if they were to take place, would blow up the bilateral relationship and would result in the significant scaling down of cooperation,” Dr Felbab-Brown said, adding that the cartels can quickly replace the leaders who are killed and rebuild destroyed manufacturing plants.

The most important element of cooperation, she said, would be for the Mexican government to revive the 2007 Merida Initiative, which was adopted under then President George W. Bush but has since faded.

The initiative included bolstering Mexico’s capacity to crack down against the cartels through intelligence sharing, joint operations, and the provision of helicopters, scanners and canine units. It also provided training for judges and the police to handle cartel cases better, along with institutional reforms like rooting out corruption that allows cartels to thrive.

But the Mexican government has not yet said that it is open to reviving Merida, and it is unclear if Mr Trump is pressing for it, said Dr Felbab-Brown.

Will China reduce cooperation?

The effort to stamp out the flow of precursor chemicals from China could be an even steeper climb.

“I do not believe that tariffs will accomplish what President Trump seeks,” Dr Felbab-Brown said.

“China has not responded as a supplicant to the tariffs, unlike Mexico and Canada, which went into overdrive to put on the table all kinds of measures to satisfy the Trump administration.

“In fact, I would expect that as tariff pressure is sustained from the US or continues to grow, China will scale back cooperation,” she predicted.

There was little teamwork between the US and China on fentanyl during the Biden administration, except in its last year. Beijing took numerous steps in 2024: It regulated more than two dozen precursor chemicals, shut down websites blatantly selling fentanyl and ratcheted up scrutiny on the Chinese underground banking system through which cartels convert dollars earned via the fentanyl trade to yuan, which is then converted to pesos.

However, when Mr Biden did not ease tariffs on Chinese imports and increased restrictions on high-tech exports to China, Beijing withdrew its cooperation over fentanyl.

Under the Trump administration, the focus will remain on China.

A bipartisan investigation in April 2024 by the House Select Committee on the Communist Party of China said that China’s value-added tax system offers subsidies for the production of the fentanyl precursors.

US Vice-President J.D. Vance has suggested that China is intentionally allowing fentanyl to enter the US as a form of asymmetric warfare and asked whether this could be considered state-sponsored terrorism.

Dr Felbab-Brown said: “I am frequently asked if China is purposefully conducting asymmetric warfare against the US via fentanyl. I have no evidence to claim that.”

She added: “However, China does subordinate the extent of its law enforcement cooperation to the larger bilateral relationship with countries with whom it wants to have a good relationship.”

Death penalty for drug dealers?

Mr Trump is yet to act on his core proposition for addressing the fentanyl crisis, which is to impose the death penalty on drug dealers.

He has made calls for Congress to mandate such a penalty and often cites laws in Singapore – his most recent reference was during a speech before the Department of Justice on March 13 – that have made a difference.

In fact, Mr Trump’s support for the death penalty goes back to his first term.

Citing a source who had spoken to Mr Trump at length about the subject, Axios reported their conversation in February 2018: “He (Trump) says: ‘When I ask the prime minister of Singapore, do they have a drug problem, (the prime minister replies,) ‘No. Death penalty.’”

Simply severing the supply chain will not suffice, however. The challenge is also curbing the demand for drugs, which drives the cartels’ lucrative operations and perpetuates the crisis.