When Donald J. Trump was first in the White House trying to strike a trade deal with China, Beijing tried to curry favor with the American president by banning all variants of the powerful synthetic opioid fentanyl.
Now, as China and the United States are deadlocked in a bitter trade war that has roiled the world, offering to do more to further stem the flow of fentanyl and the chemicals used to make it could once again be an option for China.
Beijing has for years used cooperation on fentanyl as leverage in its broader relationship with the United States. The move to ban all variants in 2019 came after President Trump accused China of not doing enough to stop the flow of the drug into the United States, and as the issue of fentanyl became increasingly tangled in a broader trade dispute.
China also agreed at that time to participate in joint law enforcement crackdowns on fentanyl with the United States. The moves led President Trump to praise the Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, for making “a wonderful humanitarian gesture.”
With the new Trump administration, China has faced even greater pressure to do more to crack down on the export of chemical precursors used to make fentanyl. The administration cited fentanyl as the reason for twice imposing additional tariffs of 10 percent on China in February and March. The Trump administration also closed a loophole on Friday that it said allowed small quantities of the chemical precursors to be shipped to the United States undetected.
Mr. Trump, who asserts that China has cheated on trade with the United States for decades, has also raised tariffs on most Chinese goods to a minimum of 145 percent. China has responded with similarly sky-high tariffs, vowing to “fight to the end” against what Beijing calls blackmail.
But there are signs that both sides might be looking for a way to de-escalate a trade war that is expected to drag down economic growth in both countries and around the world. China’s Ministry of Commerce said on Friday it was “evaluating” requests by senior U.S. officials to start negotiations — though it insisted that Beijing would agree to talks only if the United States showed “sincerity.”
Turning back to fentanyl could be one way to break the impasse.
China is considering presenting an offer to deepen cooperation with the United States on fighting the flow of fentanyl, according to a person familiar with the matter who has spoken with Chinese officials. That plan would include sending Beijing’s top security official to Washington to break the ice in trade talks.
China has said it wants the Trump administration to cancel its tariffs before the two countries hold talks. The person said that Beijing hopes that a pledge to work with the United States on fentanyl will smooth the way for both governments to simultaneously reduce their tariffs — a face-saving way to back down.
To demonstrate China’s seriousness, the person said, Beijing has tapped Wang Xiaohong, China’s Minister of Public Security and a close ally of Mr. Xi, to lead any such talks with the United States on fentanyl. The news that China was weighing addressing the Trump administration’s concerns over China’s role in the fentanyl trade was first reported by The Wall Street Journal.
Mr. Wang’s relationship with Mr. Xi dates back to at least the 1990s, when he was deputy chief of the public security bureau in Fuzhou, the capital city of the coastal province of Fujian, at a time when Mr. Xi was that city’s top official.
Mr. Wang is also director of China’s National Narcotic Control Committee, and in that capacity he held talks via video in January with Rahul Gupta, the director of the White House’s drug control office under former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. Mr. Wang said the two sides had “made positive progress” in the past year on drug control.
Offering unilaterally to do more to address the scourge of fentanyl would be a slight shift for China, which had in recent months said that it was willing to cooperate with the United States on fentanyl, but not if it was pressured to do so with tariffs.
China has bristled at accusations that it is responsible for the fentanyl crisis in the United States, saying it is instead a reflection of Washington’s failure to address social problems in America.
The Chinese foreign minister, Wang Yi, in March criticized the tariffs imposed on the grounds that China needed to do more on fentanyl, saying “the United States should not return good with evil.” That month, the government released a white paper detailing the ways it is working to control fentanyl, including using technologies like artificial intelligence. It said it opposed “finger-pointing and buck-passing” on the issue.
Shen Dingli, a Shanghai-based international relations scholar, said China has the capacity to stamp out the fentanyl trade.
“China is one of the most effective countries in the world in terms of control,” said Mr. Shen, who was not aware of China’s plans to offer talks over fentanyl.
“The fentanyl problem has never been an unsolvable technical problem,” he added. “It is just a political problem that can be solved in a matter of seconds as long as there is sincerity.”
Cooperation on fentanyl was frozen in 2022 after a visit to Taiwan by then House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Talks did not resume until after Mr. Xi held a summit with President Biden in November 2023 and Washington agreed to Beijing’s demand that U.S. sanctions be lifted on a forensics institute run by China’s Ministry of Public Security.
Last September, Chinese officials expanded the list of precursor chemicals requiring oversight. Even so, enforcement is something of a cat-and-mouse game, as producers are able to develop alternative chemicals. Complicating matters more is the fact that many of the precursor chemicals are also used to make legal pharmaceutical drugs.
David Pierson covers Chinese foreign policy and China’s economic and cultural engagement with the world. He has been a journalist for more than two decades.
The post As China Looks for Way Out of U.S. Trade Deadlock, Fentanyl Could Be Key appeared first on New York Times.
