When Donald J. Trump was the first in the White House trying to reach a commercial agreement with China, Beijing tried to do a favor with the US president prohibiting all the variants of the powerful fentanyl synthetic opioid.
Now, as China and the United States are blocked in a bitter commercial war that has traveled the world, offering to do more to express further the flow of fentanyl and the chemicals used to make once it could be an option for China.
Beijing has used for years cooperation in fentanyl as a lever in its broader relationship with the United States. The movement to prohibit all the variants in 2019 occurred after President Trump accused China of not doing enough to stop the flow of drugs in the United States, already measure that Fentanyl’s issue was incamated in a Brader commercial dispute.
China also agrees at that time to participate in the joint repressions of the application of the law in Fentanyyl with the United States. The movements led Mr. Trump to praise the Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, for making “a wonderful humanitarian gesture.”
With the new Trump administration, China has faced even greater pressure to make more to take energetic measures against the export of chemical precursors used to make fentanyl. The administration cited fentanil as the reason for imposing additional or 10 percent tariffs in China in February and March. The Trump administration also closed a lagoon on Friday that said it allowed the small amounts of the chemical precursors to be sent to the United States without being detected.
Trump, who states that China has cheated trade with the United States for decades, has also raised tariffs on most Chinese products to a minimum or 145 percent. China has responded with equally very high tariffs, promising “fighting until the end” against what Beijing calls blackmail.
But there are signs that both parties could be looking for a way to decline a commercial war that is expected to reduce economic growth both in the country and around the world. The China Ministry of Commerce said Friday that it was “evaluating” the requests of senior US officials to begin negotiations, although it insisted that Beijing would accept conversations only that the United States showed “sincerity.”
Returning to fentanyl could be a way to break the dead point.
China is considering presenting an offer to deepen cooperation with the United States on the fight against fentanyl flow, according to a person familiar with the matter that has spoken with Chinese officials. That plan would include sending the high Beijing security official to Washington to break the ice in commercial conversations.
China has said that it wants the Trump administration to cancel its tariffs before the two countries have conversations. The person said Beijing expects a promise to work with the United States in Fentanyl soft the way for both governments to simultaneously reduce their tariffs, a form that saves the face.
To demonstrate the person from China, said the person, Beijing has taken advantage of Wang Xiaohong, China Public Security Minister and a nearby ally of Mr. XI, to direct such conversations with the United States about Fentanil. The Wall Street Journal first reported the news that China was weighing to address the Trump administration conerns on the role of China in the Fentanyl trade.
Mr. Wang’s relationship with Mr. XI dates back to the 1990s, when he was deputy director of the Public Security Office in Fuzhou, the capital city of the coastal province of Fujian, at a time when Mr. XI was the top official of that city.
Mr. Wang is also the director of the National Narcotics Control Commission of China, and in that capacity, Hero speaks by video in January with Rahul Gupta, the director of the Drug Control Office of the White House Bajo Joseph R. Biden Jr. Mr. Wang said that the two parties had “progressed positive” in the last year in drug control.
Offer unilaterally to do more to address the scourge of the fentanyl would be a slight change for China, which in recent months was said to be willing to cooperate with the United States with fentanyl, but not if he did with tariffs.
China was erected by accusations that it is responsible for the fentanyl crisis in the United States, saying that it is a reflection of Washington’s failure to address social problems in the United States.
China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi, in March he criticized the tariffs imposed by the argument that China needed to do more about fentanyl, saying that “the United States should not return well with evil.” That month, the Government launched a white paper that details the ways in which it is working to control the fentanyl, including the use of technologies such as artificial intelligence. He said he opposed “pointing to his fingers and spending the money” on the subject.
Shen Dingli, a scholar of International Relations based in Shanghai, said that China had the ability to eliminate fentanyl trade.
“China is one of the most effective countries in the world in terms of control,” said Shen, who was not aware of China’s plans to sacrifice conversations about Fentanil.
“The fentanyl problem has never pushed a non -holvilized technical problem,” he added. “It is just a political problem that can be solved in seconds while there is sincerity.”
Fentanyl cooperation froze in 2022 after a visit to Taiwan for the president of the House of Representatives at that time, Nancy Pelosi. The conversations did not resume until after Mr. Xi Hero a summit with Mr. Biden in November 2023 and Washington agreed Beijing’s demand that US sanctions are raised in a forensic institute led by the Ministry of Public Security of China.
Last September, Chinese officials expanded the list of precursor chemicals that require supervision. Even so, the application is a kind of cat and mouse game, since producers can develop alternative chemicals. To complicate more things is the fact that many of the precursor chemicals are also used to make legal pharmaceutical drugs.
