Trump’s China Tariffs Aren’t Just About the Economy

The United States and China are now locked in an economic standoff, with both nations imposing high tariffs on imports from the other. But while the mainstream narrative has largely focused on how U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods might help or hurt the American economy, President Donald Trump has wisely recognized that tariffs are a diplomatic tool as much as an economic tool – particularly for addressing the fentanyl crisis.

Fentanyl now kills more than 200 Americans every day, an epidemic that exploded in severity during the Biden administration as the deadly substance flooded across the border along with unprecedented numbers of illegal aliens. But while the vast majority of fentanyl may come into the United States through Mexico and Canada, much of it traces back to Communist China.

Chinese pharmaceutical companies use “fentanyl precursors,” or the chemicals used to produce fentanyl, to make legal painkillers. But they also sell some of those precursors to drug cartels in Mexico and Central America. The Biden administration touted an agreement with Chinese President Xi Jinping to crack down on the illicit trade of fentanyl precursors in 2023, but China did nothing to uphold its end of the agreement.

That agreement was not honored for one simple reason: the Biden administration failed to include any enforcement mechanisms or even to directly acknowledge the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) role in the illicit trade of fentanyl precursors.

According to a 64-page congressional report released last year, not only did the Chinese government not prosecute manufacturers of fentanyl precursors, it continued to subsidize the production and sale of those deadly products. Chinese government officials specifically “gave monetary grants and awards to companies openly trafficking illicit fentanyl materials and other synthetic narcotics” and “allowed the open sale of fentanyl precursors and other illicit materials on the extensively monitored and controlled PRC internet.”

All of these practices became easier to pursue under the Biden administration. Chinese leaders joked that U.S.-Chinese trade and diplomatic relations with Biden in the White House were akin to playing soccer without a goalkeeper on the American side. In other words, Beijing could take what it wanted from the United States.

Dr. Yunteng Qian, a former high-ranking CCP official who defected in the late 1980s while working in the department responsible for trafficking narcotics and forging currencies, told me in an interview that Biden “should have imposed the tariffs Trump levied after the CCP completely ignored him.”

Lt. Col. Quan Changpu, who was involved in war planning against the United States in the early 1990s before defecting, also explained to me that trafficking fentanyl precursors makes the CCP far too much money to give up willingly. “Illicit narcotics sales are a crucial source of their finances, and it is also the main weapon against the U.S. in peacetime,” he said. “The CCP won’t stop it until it faces a firing squad in the form of high tariffs.”

But, Col. Changpu added, “They will never admit that China is responsible for the murder of 200 Americans a day due to fentanyl. They also want the American media to remain silent about it.”

On this front, the CCP has had some success – the narrative surrounding China tariffs has shifted to one of a simple trade dispute, rather than a broader response to China’s malign actions.

But Chinese officials who believed Trump would follow Biden’s strategy of making bold statements followed by minimal action have been sorely mistaken. Trump’s tariffs are now threatening to seriously derail an already teetering Chinese economy unless Beijing comes to the table and takes real action on trade imbalances, fentanyl, and other major concerns for U.S. negotiators.

To be sure, the United States does face real challenges as China throws up retaliatory tariffs of its own. American companies in the energy sector rely on imports of minerals like tungsten and molybdenum, while China processes an astonishing 90 percent of rare earth minerals used in everything from cell phones to U.S. military ordnance.

In the short term, American companies will be forced to scramble to find alternate suppliers, while consumers may see some increased prices. But U.S. allies like Australia have abundant reserves of rare earth minerals, and ultimately – as political leaders in both parties have acknowledged – the United States should not be reliant on imports from an adversarial nation in China.

Additionally, the American people should not have to suffer through a horrific drug epidemic that is ravaging families and communities just to gain access to cheap Chinese goods and minerals.

Short of military intervention, democracies have precious few tools with which to bring authoritarian regimes like the CCP to heel, or at the very least to the negotiating table. Trump is leveraging America’s most potent weapon, its economic might, to do just that.

Ben Solis is the pen name of an international affairs journalist, historian, and researcher.