Trump's tariff threat throws a spotlight on the whack-a-mole trade in drug precursors

President-elect Donald Trump this week cited drugs as a reason for his threat of crushing U.S. tariffs on Canadian imports.

"This Tariff will remain in effect until such time as Drugs, in particular Fentanyl, and all Illegal Aliens stop this Invasion of our Country!" Trump wrote on his social media platform Truth Social.

Canadian politicians have correctly pointed out that Canada and fellow tariff victim Mexico have little in common when it comes to the flow of illegal drugs (or migrants).

But it's also a fact that fentanyl production in Canada is booming as seizures at the border are dropping — which indicates that Canada has transformed from a buyer of fentanyl and methamphetamine into a significant producer and even exporter.

That domestic production depends on getting the ingredients into the country. Increasingly, as the drug industry moves into synthetics and away from dependence on plants like coca and poppies, efforts to counter drug trafficking are focusing on those ingredients and precursors.

It's possible that 2022 may be remembered as the worst of the fentanyl epidemic. Deaths in the U.S. from synthetic opioid overdoses, which started to rise sharply around 2014, appear to have peaked in that year and declined slightly in 2023.

Canada is also posting a slight decline in fatal drug overdoses, with about 21 deaths every day in the first three months of 2024, compared to 23 a day in the same period last year. (For comparison, about two Canadians per day die by homicide, and five die on the roads.)

But that sliver of good news cannot obscure the huge toll that fentanyl has taken on both countries.

Between 2016 and 2024, both countries lost about the same number of people to opioid toxicity that they lost in the Second World War — about 47,000 in Canada and about 400,000 in the U.S. As in war, fentanyl's victims are typically young.

So it's hardly surprising that fentanyl has become a political issue, and whether Trump's allegations against Canada are true or not, it's clearly in both countries' interests to do something about fentanyl.

The logic behind importing chemicals to manufacture fentanyl or meth — instead of producing them overseas and then importing the finished product — is not hard to understand.

China is the number-one source country for the chemicals used to make synthetic opioids. China executes people who make illegal fentanyl.

But that same Chinese government has long been willing to turn a blind eye to Chinese companies that sell chemicals others might use to make fentanyl elsewhere in the world. That fact has led the U.S. to sanction Chinese companies and individuals Washington accuses of profiting from the trade without facing consequences at home.

After sanctioning eight China-based chemical companies last year, the U.S. Department of Justice said the companies proved by their actions that they knew their products were being used for illicit purposes.