'Stakes are high': Experts fear Trump plan could lead to more fentanyl in the U.S.

President Joe Biden's administration has been quietly working with Chinese officials to help stop the flow of fentanyl into the United States. Now, Donald Trump is putting it at risk over his promise of tariffs on China, according to some.

The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that counternarcotics officials from the U.S. and Mexico flew to China weeks ago to exchange intelligence over the drug flowing into North America. It comes after years of China refusing to "crack down on Chinese chemical producers" making the drug.

U.S. officials say that China has been the dominant supplier of the chemicals mixed together to make fentanyl. It flows into the U.S. or into Mexico, which then also flows into the United States. The U.S. says that "the Chinese government hasn’t done nearly enough to regulate them."

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The report said the Biden administration held a 2023 summit with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, which many Republicans criticized as naive. Those Republicans argued that Beijing’s diplomatic efforts couldn’t be trusted. Still, GOP members told Raw Story in 2023 that solving the opioid epidemic required much more than stopping fentanyl.

The report said there is now concern that Trump's promised tariffs could harm the goodwill and efforts built by the current administration.

"The stakes over what happens next are high, with tariffs that could impact hundreds of billions of dollars in trade between the world’s two biggest economies," said The Journal. "They could also shape the course of the campaign to combat a drug overdose epidemic that has destroyed lives and upended communities across the U.S."

Trump announced his retaliatory tariff plan on Truth Social, saying that it would be implemented on his first day in office without any action by Congress.

The hope is that as long as Trump's tariffs aren't implemented and are nothing more than a hardball tactic, there might be some success, according to some experts.

“As long as the threats stay threats, there is a way for diplomacy out of it,” Vanda Felbab-Brown, a counternarcotics expert at the Brookings Institution in Washington, told the Journal.

However, if Trump follows through on that threat during his first few days in office, U.S. experts say that the move could cause bigger problems by making Xi look "weak" by continuing to cooperate with the U.S.

Overdose deaths exploded during Trump's first administration, data from the National Institute of Health reveals.

"In the heat of negotiations over tariffs in his first term, Trump got Xi to more strictly regulate the production and sale of fentanyl in China," the report said.

In 2023, overdose deaths decreased for the first time, the Centers for Disease Control reported.

Now, most of the production has shifted "to Mexico and elsewhere. But Chinese companies continued to produce the chemicals needed to make fentanyl," said the Journal.

Read the full report here.