According to preliminary FBI data, violent crime fell nearly 10 percent in 2025 compared to 2024 – one of the most dramatic declines on record. While domestic law enforcement officers undoubtedly deserve immense credit for their heroic efforts to make America safer, credit also goes to President Donald Trump’s strategic decision to target the foreign sources of drug trafficking.
While exact statistics are difficult to measure, at least one quarter of all arrests in the United States are related to drug offenses. One study found that an astonishing 70 percent of all male prison inmates abuse drugs, compared to just 11.2 percent of the general population.
Even if an individual is charged with a non-drug-related offense, it is likely that illicit drugs contributed in some way to his arrest. Dr. Johann Walther, a former Swiss government advisor on health and pathologies, told me in an interview that “most crimes involve illegal narcotics.” He emphasized that “addressing this issue will have a positive impact on overall lawfulness in society.”
Accordingly, the Trump administration has prioritized stopping the flow of drugs into the country – particularly fentanyl, which killed nearly 50,000 Americans in 2024 and more than 75,000 in 2023. That mission started with securing the border but has now expanded to targeting narcotics traffickers abroad as well.
One of the most significant enforcement operations came last week, with President Trump confirming that U.S. forces had eliminated Hector Rusthenford Guerrero Flores, better known as Nino Guerrero, in a “swift and lethal” kinetic strike in Venezuela. Guerrero was a major player in the infamous Tren de Aragua gang.
As U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton explained, the gang is responsible for horrific acts of violence and drug trafficking throughout North America, including into the United States. NPR noted that the Trump administration has “taken a series of extraordinary actions against the gang, including a series of strikes on small boats his administration has accused of smuggling drugs to America.”
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth also highlighted the involvement of the Americas Counter Cartel Coalition (ACCC), also known as the “Shield of the Americas,” in the operation. ACCC is a multinational military and political coalition which President Trump established in March for this exact purpose.
Dr. Deodat Haentjens, a former advisor to the President of Interpol on counternarcotics policy, said that the strike demonstrated to criminal organizations that the United States is willing to “act beyond previous expectations.” He added that American strikes on drug traffickers under Trump “send a clear message that narcotics barons did not anticipate.”
Professor Markus Allenbach, a former advisor to German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, told me that criminologists should view Trump’s decisive action as “a paradigm shift in fighting crime.” Allenbach also noted that Trump has directly confronted Chinese President Xi Jinping over Beijing’s failure to stop the production and smuggling of fentanyl precursors – something that he called a “genuine quality change” that has not been seen in decades.
While most of the illicit fentanyl in the United States comes from Mexico, about 97 percent of the chemicals used to make the deadly drug come from Chinese companies. As AMAC Newsline reported last month, China finally began cracking down on the distributors of fentanyl precursors following Trump’s visit to China earlier this year. Whereas before Beijing has largely failed to follow through on its enforcement promises, the Chinese government is now releasing specific reports about seizures of illegal precursor chemicals.
An anonymous high-ranking CCP defector familiar with the Party’s drug activities against the West explained that “before President Trump and the FBI’s new strategy, criminal groups believed themselves untouchable due to state protection and lucrative trade interests” – a tactic deployed by the CCP since the 1950s. But now, “their operations are being systematically dismantled,” marking “a clear triumph for the U.S. and the West.”
Another major law enforcement investigation in Japan has exposed an organization going by the name of Hubei Amarvel Biotech for orchestrating a vast fentanyl smuggling network that stretched to Australia, Russia, and India as well as the United States and Mexico. The criminal enterprise used Japanese ports that received little scrutiny as a “command hub” to manage shipments of precursors from China. The company’s executives have already been convicted in the United States.
It is no coincidence that this crackdown on foreign drug trafficking and smuggling has coincided with a dramatic decline in violent crime in the United States. Overall, the preliminary FBI data shows that murder and non-negligent manslaughter are down 18.1 percent, rape is down 7.6 percent, robbery is down 18.5 percent, and aggravated assault is down 7.2 percent. Property crime also decreased by 12.4 percent from 2024 to 2025, according to the data.
Many of Trump’s sharpest critics frequently talk about the “root causes” of crime, citing things like poverty, racism, and wealth inequality. But Trump is eliminating one of the biggest actual root causes of crime – and unlike liberal overtures to “restorative justice,” his policies are delivering real results.
Ben Solis is the pen name of an international affairs journalist, historian, and researcher.
