At his recent meeting with Donald Trump in South Korea, China’s President Jinping Xi agreed to help stem the export of precursor chemicals used in the production of deadly synthetic opioids, including fentanyl. In return, Trump slashed tariffs by 50%.
Progress was quick. This week Beijing formally announced that it would be restricting 13 additional chemicals. A joint working group is also being established to tackle the drug issue.
In adopting this approach, Trump has revived the Biden playbook. The working-group format was set up in 2024 by the previous administration, which also persuaded Beijing to control some additional precursors. At the time Biden was slammed by Republican lawmakers, including then-Senator JD Vance, for removing sanctions on China in return for anti-drug cooperation.
Ironic, then, that Trump should essentially make the same trade, only this time with tariffs, not sanctions.
The international community is constantly playing catch-up as it tries to control the dizzying array of new drugs.
The critics had a point, though, because China’s anti-drug collaboration has long been fitful and incomplete. Beijing has typically used counternarcotics as a bargaining chip, not as an end in itself, dangling assistance against drugs in return for concessions from the United States. If the bilateral relationship sours, as it did dramatically during the Covid-19 pandemic, joint efforts against drugs fall by the wayside. And when there is a rapprochement, collaboration is restored – until the next crisis comes along.
And even if China does fulfil its latest promise to curb precursors, that will not stop the opioid crisis in the United States. That is because synthetic drug producers, unlike farmers cultivating plant-based drugs such as opium, can easily adapt to supply constraints. All they need to do is tweak the chemical formulae of their products to make drugs that are similar in effect but technically legal. Another option is to make the controlled precursors themselves using unscheduled chemical components.
The Mexican cartels have even hired university trained chemists to do this. Many chemicals are dual-use and have important applications in the licit economy, making it hard to ban them.
The international community is constantly playing catch-up as it tries to control the dizzying array of new drugs. One recent example is nitazenes, an opioid many times more potent than fentanyl which has caused overdose deaths in Europe and North America.
Synthetic drugs are a dream come true for organised crime. They can be made cheaply, quickly and in small clandestine laboratories, unlike opium or coca whose cultivation is bound by natural cycles and takes place slowly, in open spaces.
China used to be the main source of finished fentanyl arriving in the United States. But Xi banned it during Trump’s first term. Production then relocated to Mexico, utilising materials imported from China’s enormous and poorly regulated chemical industry.
Over the years Beijing has repeatedly been pressured into scheduling precursors used in fentanyl manufacture. Those policies have caused, at best, short-term disruption to opioid supply.
In 2017, for instance, China followed the international community in scheduling two major fentanyl precursors. Producers shifted to using a different chemical, 4-AP. Last year China controlled 4-AP and two other substances at the Biden administration’s urging. But online Chinese chemical vendors simply started marketing alternative products. A short period of readjustment, and business was back to normal. Precursor control is essentially a game of whack-a-mole.
And even if Beijing regulated every single ingredient that could ever be used in illicit drug synthesis, producers could source their materials from India’s massive chemical industry, which is even less well-regulated than China’s.
Now, it is true that fentanyl overdose deaths in the United States have been falling since 2023. And this drop coincided with renewed anti-drug cooperation from Beijing, suggesting that China’s controls helped. But other reasons have been suggested for the dip, particularly the wider availability of overdose reversal medications.
Any positive change to the US drug crisis resulting from Chinese chemical controls will likely be transient. When China scheduled fentanyl in 2019, there were short-term retail price increases in the US opioid market until production moved to Mexico.
Of course, it could be argued that a short-term disruption to the illicit drug market is better than no disruption at all, and that even a few months of elevated fentanyl prices can save lives. That may well be true.
But to really defeat the opioid crisis, more will be needed. Beijing will have to increase arrests and prosecutions of suspected traffickers and cooperate with the American government to fight money-laundering. The United States will also have to persuade India to step up regulation of its own chemical industry, no easy task at a time of trade disputes and strained relations between New Delhi and Washington.
And, finally, the Trump administration will need to reduce demand for opioids inside the US by expanding access to drug treatment and prevention. But, given the administration’s cuts to healthcare services, the likelihood of that seems low.
Trump’s deal with Xi is a useful step that could build momentum and lead to other forms of law enforcement cooperation. But precursor curbs alone will not stop the worst drug crisis in human history.
