As schools across the nation celebrate Red Ribbon Week, United States President Donald Trump seems determined to tackle the issue of drugs – specifically fentanyl – at his upcoming meeting with Chinese president Xi Jinping.
What is fentanyl and why does it matter?
According to the NIH’s National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), fentanyl is an addictive, completely synthetic (no natural ingredients) opioid traditionally used as a prescription pain medication. The drug’s heightened potency when compared to most other opioids has made it one of the most deadly illegal drugs available with even small amounts proving fatal.
A significant contributing factor to the overdose crisis in the U.S. as a whole and specifically overdose deaths since 2017 is the presence or combination of numerous drugs. Often added to other illicit drugs or counterfeit medication in minute amounts, the presence of fentanyl can tremendously increase the fatal potential of drugs with unsuspecting users potentially unaware of the deadly opioid’s presence.
In recent years, fentanyl has grown increasingly more prevalent in the illicit drugs scene. According to the NIDA, in 2017, law enforcement in the U.S. seized 49,657 pills containing fentanyl. In 2023, that number skyrocketed to 115,562,603 pills – nearly 230,000% of the 2017 amount.
Almost simultaneously, unintentional teen (US youth aged 15-19) overdose deaths also increased significantly. According to the NIDA, in the first quarter of 2017, the unintentional drug overdose death rate per 100,000 population over time was 0.83. By the third quarter of 2022, that number nearly doubled to a death rate of 1.63.
What is the connection between China and fentanyl?
China has long been attributed – at least in part – to the fentanyl crisis in the United States. According to Brookings Institute senior fellow Vanda Felbab-Brown in a Brookings podcast on the U.S. opioid crisis, fentanyl, and China, “China was the country from which most fentanyl started arriving in the United States…in about 2013, 2014 [when]…fentanyl emerg[ed] for the first time in the illicit market on any large scale in the U.S.”
In September of 2018, a U.S. House of Representatives subcommittee – the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights and International Organizations – held a hearing titled “Tackling Fentanyl: Holding China Accountable” that examined China’s role as a manufacturer of the precursor chemicals that went into creating fentanyl and its responsibility in the rising number of American overdose deaths.
Less than two years later, in January 2020, a DEA intelligence report titled “Fentanyl Flow to the United States” examined the movement of fentanyl to the United States, identifying China as “the primary source of fentanyl and fentanyl-related substances trafficked through international mail and express consignment operations environment [and] the main source for all fentanyl-related substances trafficked into the United States”.
What is expected to come out of the Trump-Xi meeting?
In April of 2025, Trump issued an executive order titled “Further Amendment to Duties Addressing the Synthetic Opioid Supply Chain in the People’s Republic of China as Applied to Low-Value Imports” that raised the taxes on low-value imports, some of which would otherwise be exempt.
Trump and Xi’s meeting is set to address these very tariffs. Both presidents are slated to deliberate on a trade framework that would reduce American retaliatory tariffs on Chinese imports in exchange for greater Chinese commitment to prevent the export of fentanyl precursor chemicals. According to Reuters (which cited itself the Wall Street Journal), the framework could potentially cut the existing 20% tariffs on Chinese goods in half for greater cooperation regarding precursor chemical exports.
According to NBC, the first issue Trump plans to address with Xi in their South Korea meeting on Thursday is that of fentanyl and China’s “fail[ure]to curb the international flow of precursor chemicals for the deadly opioid, which Trump has cited as one of his justifications for imposing tariffs.”
In an interview with Kristen Welker, the moderator for NBC News’ “Meet the Press” segment, treasury secretary Scott Bessent expressed high hopes for addressing the resolution of the fentanyl epidemic during the Trump-Xi meeting.
