Upon returning to the White House, U.S. President Donald Trump announced the imposition of an additional 10 percent tariff on Chinese imports as “a response to China’s failure to curb fentanyl exports.” Is Trump imposing tariffs as punishment or a negotiation tool on the fentanyl issue? Or does he just want to use the fentanyl issue as an excuse to hurt China’s trade? Whatever the motivation, tariffs would only raise tensions in relations and risk undermining China-U.S. counternarcotics cooperation.
Misplaced fentanyl dispute
The large-scale overdose of synthetic fentanyl in the United States has become a serious national public health crisis. The U.S., the world’s largest consumer of fentanyl substances, and China, the world’s largest producer of chemical products, find themselves caught in a fentanyl dispute that strains an already fraught relationship.
When Trump first took office in 2017, he made fighting synthetic opioids a national priority and blamed China for being a source. He even accused China of waging an “opioid war” against the U.S. President Joe Biden then designated China as a “major drug source country.” Aside from the naming-and-shaming tactic, the Trump and Biden administrations maintained a pressure campaign against China.
However, the blame game proved to be misplaced and even counter-productive. It obscures the fact that the U.S. fentanyl problem is primarily a demand-driven crisis. The synthetic nature of fentanyl makes stemming the supply virtually impossible without targeting the root cause. Contrary to American politicians’ characterization of China as an indifferent and even intentional player in the U.S. fentanyl crisis, China — a victim of drug abuse during the Opium Wars of the mid-1800s — understands the scourge of the fentanyl problem afflicting Americans and is making efforts to cooperate with the U.S. to mitigate the crisis.
Counternarcotics cooperation
During the first Trump administration, fentanyl became a prominent issue in China-U.S. relations. President Xi Jinping and President Trump agreed to strengthen cooperation in Buenos Aires in December 2018.
One of the most notable outcomes out of the cooperation is China’s decision to schedule, as controlled substances, the whole class of fentanyl in 2019. China’s actions are exceptional in that it made the decision in the absence of a large-scale domestic abuse. Even the U.S. has yet not scheduled the whole class of fentanyl analogues.
According to the International Narcotics Control Strategy Report released by the U.S. State Department in March 2022, almost no fentanyl or its analogues have been detected entering the United States from China since 2019. However, as the U.S. has not taken adequate steps to curb demand, the U.S. fentanyl problem has not diminished. Then the U.S. shifted to blaming China for exporting fentanyl precursor chemicals either directly or through Mexico and Canada into the United States.
China-U.S. counternarcotics cooperation ground to a halt as bilateral relations suffered a blow when U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan in a provocative move in August 2022. It was not until the end of 2023 that Xi and Biden announced, at their meeting in San Francisco, the resumption of counternarcotics cooperation.
Since January 2024, China and the U.S. have held counternarcotics dialogues and launched the Working Group on Counternarcotics Cooperation, where the two sides have conducted robust cooperation in the areas of substance control, joint law enforcement and technological exchanges. China also made another move to schedule new fentanyl precursor chemicals.
Bilateral cooperation in fighting illicit fentanyl trafficking initially made progress. According to preliminary data from the Centers for Disease Control, U.S. drug overdose deaths fell by 17 percent from July 2023 to July 2024 — the first downward adjustment since 2018. Rahul Gupta, director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, said the decrease shows that U.S. efforts to reduce overdose deaths are working, including making treatment more accessible and cracking down on cartel leaders and drug production.
Potentials and challenges ahead
These developments demonstrate that with goodwill and pragmatic collaboration, China-U.S. counternarcotics cooperation has the potential to achieve tangible results. However, practical challenges also arise.
First of all, the complex nature of the fentanyl supply chain makes drug control efforts difficult. Fentanyl precursors have dual uses, and there is no workable plan yet on how to combat trafficking of illegal fentanyl precursor chemicals while avoiding damaging the legitimate global fentanyl trade. The U.S. asked China to conduct a global supply chain review of fentanyl precursors on the principle of “know your customer,” but the widely accepted international practice puts the responsibility for such reviews on the importing country, not the exporters. In addition, the “iron law” of prohibition predicts that even if China eliminates all fentanyl precursor chemicals to the U.S., there would be a “substitution effect” that would prompt the shift of the production of such substances to other places, such as India.
Second, the differing practices of China and the U.S. on the fentanyl issue hinders mutual understanding and mutual learning. The U.S. tends to resist strict regulation and focuses more on “harm reduction” instead of “demand reduction.” In contrast, China has a zero-tolerance policy on drugs, which is a more powerful deterrent for drug crimes. These different values stem from different political and social realities, which are difficult to reconcile and hinder genuine exchanges of experience and best practices.
The Americans reject China’s harsh drug policy, including incarceration and even the death penalty, for serious drug traffickers, as well as compulsory detention for drug abusers in rehabilitation centers. In Chinese eyes, the U.S. government is unwilling to curb fentanyl demand. Worse, the legalization of marijuana and the creation of government-supervised injection facilities for drugs only deepen America’s addiction culture. It is understandable that China feels scapegoated and coerced into bearing responsibility for Americans’ own problems.
Last but not least, the trust deficit between the two countries further complicates cooperation. China-U.S. relations remain fragile, and bilateral counternarcotics cooperation is subject to geopolitical tensions. To make matters worse, with the hard-line consensus on China in Washington, the fentanyl dispute has become seriously politicized. For example, as the Biden administration sought to restart counternarcotics cooperation with China, the Republican-led Select Committee on China in the House of Representatives released a controversial report alleging that the Chinese government “subsidizes fentanyl production to fuel the crisis in the United States.” Such long-term disinformation has shaped negative American public opinion on China, forming a vicious cycle that undermines bilateral cooperation.
Given the deadly and complex nature of the U.S. fentanyl crisis, making the best of potential cooperation and overcoming challenges have become daunting tasks. Instead of tariffs, it would be more effective and sustainable for China and the U.S. to continue counternarcotics cooperation in a more rational, scientific and pragmatic way.
