US President Donald Trump slapped the new tariff on Chinese goods, partially in response to the alleged role of Beijing in a deadly Opioid epidemic in the United States.
Washington has long accused Beijing of a blind eye to a deadly fantaneel trade, which is estimated by US officials that thousands of deaths occurred in a year. China denies responsibility.
Here AFP sees where this issue currently stands:
What is fentanyl and where does it come from?
The United States is facing an epidemic of deaths caused by phenomenal, a synthetic opioid is more powerful and cheaper to produce more powerful and cheaper than heroin.
US officials have said that this is now the main cause of death among people between the ages of 18 to 45 years.
The US Drug Enforcement Agency has accused China of being “the main source for all fantanel-related substances of smuggling in the United States”.
While the Congress Research Service admitted last year that the direct supply of drug from China was steep in 2019 by strict controls from Beijing, the move only transferred supply lines.
Instead of the drugs being supplied directly through international courier services, it has been said, chemical components are sent from China to Mexico, where they are then made in Phantenile and smuggled to the border.
Many of those components are legal in China and legitimate medical uses as painkillers – make prosecution difficult.
Beijing, who insisted that “there is no such thing as an illegal smuggling of Phantenile between China and Mexico” has promised to crack.
This has pointed to its hard drug laws – some of the world’s most rigorous – and warned that the new tariff “will compulsorily affect and harm future bilateral cooperation on drug control”.
What has America done?
Former President Joe Biden’s administration preferred the fight against Fantenal.
In October 2023, it slapped sanctions on more than two dozen China-based institutions and accused several US-based narcotics smugglers, dark web vendors, virtual currency money launders and mexican cartans of being “source of supply” for cartels. .
The group, including a Wuhan-based company and several other firms located in Hong Kong and mainland, is considered to be responsible for the shipment of about 900 kg “seized Fentanile and Mentalfetamine Put”. given. Mexico.
The then American Attorney General Merick Garland said, “The global phentineal supply chain, which ends with the death of Americans, often begins with chemical companies in China.”
China condemned the investigation at that time as part of the American campaign of “pressure and restrictions” against it.
What has America and China agreed?
The China-US dialogue on drug control was stopped in the years in front of some of its worst relations.
But after a summit between Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping in San Francisco in November 2023, Washington and Beijing agreed to resume the talks.
In the last summer, a counternarcotics working group called in Washington and China announced that it would increase its regulation of the three major fennels.
Will the latest karb completely stop the border cross smugglers-the Department of Justice said “suited to tighten the restrictions”-to be seen till now.
Analysts say the manufacturers are able to rapidly develop new variants of synthetic pioneers, which can be identified and added to the scheduled list of substances controlled by Chinese authorities.
Wanda Felb-Brown, an expert in organized crime at the Brookings Institution, said that Beijing needs to take a strict line against domestic firms involved in business.
“We are not close to strong prosecutions anywhere, either a strong prosecution in the money laundering sector or smuggling the forearm for the Mexican Cartel,” he said in a podcast.
Will tariffs work?
Whether the tariff will take more action than Beijing, it is not clear.
Failub-Brown argued that Beijing’s cooperation is associated with China-American relations.
“With the countries with whom China has good relations or with whom he wants to have good relations … it expands the cooperation of law enforcement and counter-nashed substances,” he explained.
“And with countries with whom it has poor relations or with whom the relationship deteriorates, it denies cooperation.”
China’s Foreign Ministry has warned that Washington should “not take for China’s goodwill”.
There are money laundering networks to reduce the problem that outlines business, which experts say close coordination is required to close between Washington and Beijing.
“International drug cartel is rapidly moving to special Chinese criminal gangs for rapid, cheap and secure money laundering services,” Zongyuan Zo Liu wrote for the Council on Foreign Relations in a September report.
Liu wrote, “Getting support from Beijing to prevent the flow of illegal phentineiles and its precursor chemicals is an important first step in addressing the problem of supply.”
(This story is not edited by NDTV employees and auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
