Tens of thousands of Americans are dying every year due to fentanyl, and China is complicit, warns author and China expert Gordon Chang. It’s now incumbent on President Donald Trump to hold China accountable, he says.
“The Chinese don’t respect us. So, they don’t respect friendship. They don’t reciprocate it. They press the advantage, and so we need to try something new,” Chang said of America’s approach to dealing with the China-fentanyl issue.
More than 48,000 Americans died from synthetic opioid—mainly, fentanyl—poisonings and overdoses in 2024, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The precursor chemicals used to make fentanyl flow out of China to South and Central America before making their way into the U.S.
Trump is scheduled to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping in South Korea on Thursday. Trump has imposed a 20% tariff on China, specifically over Beijing’s failure to stop the flow of fentanyl-precursor chemicals flowing out of China, but the president indicated Wednesday he plans to lower the tariff following the meeting with Xi.
“I expect to be lowering them, because I believe that they can help us with the fentanyl situation. They’re going to be doing what they can do,” Trump said.
But Chang says he’s leery of China’s pledges to address the crisis:
Remember, Xi Jinping promised to stop the flow of fentanyl in 2016. That was a promise to President [Barack] Obama. And in 2018, he promised that to Trump. And in 2023, he promised it to [President Joe] Biden.
The fentanyl deaths of American citizens “were not overdoses, these were murders,” Chang said.
It has become a common practice of drug cartels to lace other drugs with fentanyl. Because of the potency of fentanyl, even a small amount equivalent to a few crystals of salt can be lethal to an adult.
Chang said:
Trump needs to, instead of reducing the fentanyl tariff … he should say, you know, anyone who kills an American is not trading with the United States.
Fentanyl deaths have declined in the past year, with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reporting a 24% year-over-year decline in drug overdose deaths at the end of fiscal year 2024.
But despite Xi’s pledge to crackdown on fentanyl chemicals, the drug continues to pose a major threat to the U.S. In the years following the COVID-19 pandemic, drug overdose deaths, primarily driven by fentanyl, spiked to as high as 100,000 or more a year.
“The bar for progress from China on fentanyl is low, given that they actively subsidize the production and export of fentanyl precursors while shielding criminal networks and money launderers from U.S. investigations and sanctions,” Andres Martinez-Fernandez, a senior policy analyst at The Heritage Foundation’s Allison Center for National Security, told Daily Signal.
“China has clearly evaded accountability for its role in the fentanyl crisis for far too long,” Martinez-Fernandez said.
“However, during President Trump’s first term and prior to the pandemic, the full extent of the fentanyl threat was certainly not as clear as it became under President Biden,” he added.
Synthetic opioid—primarily, fentanyl—deaths, reached a record high of just under 80,000 during the Biden administration in 2022.
“President Trump understands that the U.S. cannot base its counter-fentanyl strategy on hopes for concerted action by the [Chinese Communist Party],” Martinez-Fernandez said. “That’s why the U.S. is taking bold action against the narco-terrorists in our hemisphere while pressing Mexico to take similar action.”
The Trump administration has taken a strong position on enforcing border and immigration laws and is employing new and old technologies to secure the border. The U.S. has also now carried out more than a dozen strikes on suspected drug-smuggling vessels said to be carrying narcotics destined for the U.S.
