Why the Fentanyl Crisis Requires a More Comprehensive Strategy Than Threats and Tariffs- Par Vanda Felbab-Brown

Publié par Vanda Felbab-Brown sur 17 Février 2025, 19:47pm

En français. Pourquoi la crise du Fentanyl demande une stratégie plus complète que les menaces et les tarifs. Tu m'étonnes...

Between January 20 and February 1, U.S. President Donald Trump signed several executive orders declaring national emergencies on the U.S. southern and northern borders, thanks, in part, to the “the sustained influx of illicit opioids and other drugs” into the United States. Citing the public health crisis created, in particular, by fentanyl—as well as concerns about undocumented migrants—he then imposed a 25 percent tariff on most imports from Canada and Mexico and a ten percent tariff on Chinese goods. Although Canada and Mexico managed to negotiate a monthlong postponement of their new tariffs, in early February the tariff on Chinese imports went into effect.

These showy moves should not come as a surprise. Throughout his 2024 presidential campaign, Trump focused on the threats posed by the illicit drug trade, promising to “end the drug war” by executing drug dealers. He vowed to punish countries responsible for manufacturing and smuggling drugs and the chemicals used to make them with tariffs and other retributions. After the November election, his pick for “border czar,” Tom Homan, pledged to send special operations troops to Mexico to “take out” drug cartels—a threat that other Republican politicians and Trump associates also made throughout 2024.

Trump is right to focus on the drug crisis. Opioids, predominantly fentanyl, have killed more than half a million Americans since 2012. During the epidemic’s worst two years—2021 and 2022—more than 100,000 people in the United States died annually from drug overdoses. But many of the president’s proposals are fraught with grave risks. Along with threatening tariffs and military strikes against Mexico, Trump launched a process to designate drug cartels and other criminal organizations as foreign terrorist organizations; the full list of FTOs will be announced in the second half of February. Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden—as well as Trump himself, during his first term—already considered such a designation and decided against it, realizing that it would do more harm than good.

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