President Biden said Wednesday that Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed to crack down on the flow of Chinese-made chemicals that criminal cartels use to manufacture illicit fentanyl.
Mr. Biden said their nations agreed to stem the flow of precursor chemicals and pill presses from China to the Western Hemisphere — namely Mexico, where the cartels finish the synthetic opioid and insert it in other drugs.
“It’s going to save lives, and I appreciate President Xi’s commitment on this issue,” Mr. Biden said at a press conference Wednesday evening.
As part of the agreement, U.S. and China will maintain teams that coordinate on policy and law enforcement to “make sure it works,” Mr. Biden said.
The agreement, which was crafted on the sidelines of Mr. Biden’s meeting with Mr. Xi near San Francisco, takes aim at a synthetic opioid that is responsible for tens of thousands of U.S. deaths per year.
China stopped shipping fentanyl directly to the U.S. under pressure from the Trump administration in 2019.
But Chinese companies still ship precursor chemicals to Mexico, where the cartels finish the product and push it north of the border.
Agents say nearly all of the finished fentanyl supply flows out of Mexico, often in the form of counterfeit pills that are taken by addicted people or unsuspecting users.
Besides chemicals, the pill presses are supplied exclusively from China, government officials say.
“China took action to greatly reduce the amount of fentanyl directly from China to the United States. But in the years since that time, the challenge has evolved from finished fentanyl to fentanyl-chemical ingredients and pill presses, which are being shipped without controls,” Mr. Biden said.
It is unclear how stringent Beijing will be in following through on the agreement.
The countries have an adversarial relationship, and foreign experts have cast doubt on China’s willingness to follow through on prior promises, such as agricultural purchases under former President Trump’s marquee trade deal.
“Obviously we’re going to want to see whether China continues to follow up. In many respects, the proof is in the pudding here and these are important steps,” a senior administration official told reporters. “We think they’re important, and the president thought this is the important central thing we can do in U.S.-China relations for the American people.”
Fentanyl started to flood the heroin supply in the middle of the last decade, resulting in an uptick in overdose deaths.
The synthetic opioid has shown up in a variety of drugs and counterfeit pills since then, killing Americans of all ages and backgrounds and bedeviling the Obama, Trump and Biden administrations.
Congress is debating ways to stop the flow of deadly drugs, with Democrats calling for better screening at ports of entry while Republicans point to lax security at the U.S.-Mexico as a central problem.
Some lawmakers want to see stiffer criminal penalties for traffickers of fentanyl and its chemical analogs.
On the campaign trail, Mr. Trump says fentanyl dealers should face the death penalty. His leading GOP-primary rival, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, says his administration would shoot fentanyl traffickers who try to cross in the U.S.
Leading Democrats, meanwhile, praised Mr. Biden for the diplomatic approach, saying it is a good deal for both nations.
“When my colleagues and I met with President Xi a month ago, we were blunt in how fentanyl was devastating our communities and that China must recognize its role in combatting this crisis,” Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer, New York Democrat, said Wednesday. “I told President Xi that China taking steps to crack down on the sale of precursor chemicals would be a great, great deal for them. The benefit they’d see in a boost in American goodwill would far more than outweigh the tiny cost on their economy. Any good businessman would see that this would be a great trade.”
• Tom Howell Jr. can be reached at thowell@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.