Trump Camp Says China ‘Attacking’ US With Fentanyl, Plans Response – FBC News

US President Donald Trump takes part in a welcome ceremony with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing (Source: Reuters)

Donald Trump’s return to power portends a shake-up in America’s approach to the U.S. fentanyl crisis and what anti-narcotics officials say is the biggest obstacle to solving it: China.

Advisors to the Republican president’s transition team are advocating a much more aggressive stance toward Beijing on fentanyl than that of incumbent Democratic President Joe Biden.

Trump is already indicating that to stem the flow of narcotics, he will resort to his weapon of choice: tariffs.

In posts Monday on Truth Social, his social network, he promised additional 10% tariffs on goods from China and 25% tariffs on goods from Mexico and Canada. Trump claimed that these countries have not taken strong enough action to prevent illegal drugs, especially fentanyl, from entering the United States. He said his many talks with China about stopping the flow of drugs were “in vain.”

Trump’s advisers are also pushing for U.S. sanctions on Chinese financial institutions allegedly linked to the fentanyl trade. Trump will be the final decider.

China is the dominant source of chemical precursors used by Mexican cartels to produce fentanyl, while Chinese money launderers have become major players in the international drug trade, US authorities say. The Biden administration has spent the past year negotiating with Beijing to address both. Diplomacy has so far produced promising but modest results. That has frustrated some U.S. security officials and China hawks, who say the U.S. must step up pressure to push Beijing’s leaders into action.

“If you don’t do those things, you’re a doormat,” said Steve Yates, a China expert and former national security official in the George W. Bush administration. Yates, who is not formally involved in the president-elect’s transition team, has advised Trump’s inner circle on fentanyl policy. More than 400,000 Americans have died from synthetic opioid overdoses in the past decade, including Yates’ daughter, who died last year.

Yates and others advising the Trump team say one of the quickest and surest ways Washington can get Beijing’s attention is to sanction Chinese banks that do business with money launderers and corrupt chemical sellers.

Foreign banks hit by U.S. sanctions cannot contact U.S. financial institutions and have no access to the U.S. dollar, severely limiting their ability to do business internationally, said Edward Fishman, a sanctions expert at Columbia University. He said Washington could also freeze US assets in sanctioned banks.

It is a powerful weapon that has been used against financial institutions in countries of some U.S. adversaries, such as Iran and Russia, but never against banks in Mexico and China linked to drug trafficking, said David Asher, a former U.S. anti-money laundering official. who helped target the finances of the Islamic State terrorist group.

‘You have to hit all the bankers. It’s pretty basic,” says Asher, now a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, a conservative think tank in Washington.

Asher laid out a preliminary plan circulating in Trump transition circles that calls for a whole-of-government task force that includes all aspects of U.S. diplomatic, law enforcement and financial power to address the fentanyl crisis.

Parts of the plan, shared with Reuters, call for criminal charges against major Chinese and Mexican financial institutions that allegedly launder money for the cartels; massive sanctions against Chinese companies and people involved in the fentanyl trade; increased bounties for the most wanted traffickers; cyberwarfare against Mexican cartels; and a US intelligence agency is targeting fentanyl, in line with the war against terrorist organizations.

A spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in Washington cited numerous steps China has taken to prevent the illicit production, trafficking and abuse of fentanyl since talks with the Biden administration resumed. The embassy warned that China would respond if the US took a more combative stance.

“Sanctions, slander and defamation against China will only undermine the basis of China-US cooperation in counter-narcotics,” the embassy said in a statement. “China firmly opposes the arbitrary use of unilateral sanctions by the US and will resolutely protect its legitimate rights and interests.”

Hostility toward the Chinese government has taken root on Capitol Hill, with both Democrats and Republicans pushing for trade action to punish Beijing for what some say is a deliberate attempt to destabilize the United States with fentanyl.

Trump’s promised 10% narcotics tariffs on China could be an opening salvo. Howard Lutnick, Trump’s pick to lead the Commerce Department and oversee the office of the U.S. Trade Representative, said in a podcast interview in October that “China is attacking America” ​​with fentanyl and suggested Trump could impose tariffs up to 200% on China. .

During his campaign, Trump promised to designate the Mexican drug cartels as terrorist groups and use the US military to destroy them.

But it is not clear whether Trump is willing to go beyond tariffs on Chinese goods and take stronger measures, such as sanctioning Chinese banks over fentanyl.

Trump’s previous disputes with Beijing have focused on China’s massive trade surplus, not synthetic opioids. Trump expressed admiration and even love for Chinese President Xi Jinping for much of his first term, even as overdose deaths in the US soared.

Trump transition team spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt, asked by Reuters whether his administration’s increased pressure on China over fentanyl could include banking sanctions, said Americans re-elected Trump “to lead our country and restore peace by power all over the world.” She said Trump would “take the necessary action to do just that” when he returns to the White House.

A Reuters investigation into the global fentanyl supply chain has revealed how easy it is to buy precursors online from Chinese sellers, who ship them to the US by plane, disguised as gadgets and other cheap merchandise. These boxes typically pass through customs duty-free, amid a sea of ​​other Chinese imports, and are routed by traffickers to Mexican drug labs. Bipartisan sentiment is growing in Washington to end China’s use of this streamlined access channel.

There is a growing consensus in Republican circles close to Trump that Beijing has exploited and even engineered the synthetic opioid epidemic to harm Americans. They point to a bipartisan report issued in April by the House Select Committee on China that called that country the “ultimate geographic source” of the fentanyl crisis. The report alleges that Beijing provides tax breaks to Chinese companies that export fentanyl chemicals and allows groups involved in drug trafficking to operate as long as their efforts are focused abroad.