Opiate War: US-China In A Fearsome Fentanyl Fight

1/31/2025 1:16:45 AM

(MENAFN- Asia Times) United States President Donald trump recently threatened to impose an additional 10% tariff on goods coming from China in response to the illegal import into the US of the opioid fentanyl .

Fentanyl has become the latest battleground in an ongoing trade war between the world's two largest economies. China is currently the primary source of the precursor chemicals needed to manufacture fentanyl.

China and the US have taken steps to tighten the transfer of these chemicals . However, the illegal fentanyl pipeline has switched from direct export into the US to Mexico, where fentanyl is manufactured and then smuggled into the US.

While synthetic opioids like fentanyl are a relatively new class of drugs, opium has a long destructive history in trade wars and warfare, beginning with the First Opium War of 1839-42.

The Opium Wars

In the first half of the 19th century, the British government faced an economic problem. Imports of tea, porcelain and silk from China had created a large trade imbalance .

One product that the British could access in large quantities was opium grown in territories under their colonial control. The British response to address the trade imbalance was to flood the Chinese market with opium. By the 1830s, millions of Chinese citizens were addicted to the drug .

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