Recently, the US government twice levied additional tariffs on Chinese imports on the pretext of the fentanyl issue; China firmly opposes this and is taking necessary countermeasures to defend its interests.
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The unilateral imposition of additional tariffs by the United States will not only fail to resolve its own domestic fentanyl crisis, but also severely impact bilateral cooperation with China in the area of counternarcotics, significantly undermine the foundation of China-US trade and economic cooperation and cause serious damage to the multilateral trading system.
The fentanyl crisis is an issue for the US and the root cause lies in immense domestic demand for drugs like fentanyl and regulatory loopholes. China has been taking effective measures to assist the US in addressing the fentanyl issue on humanitarian grounds and out of friendly sentiment towards the American people.
China itself has put in place the toughest and most comprehensive counternarcotics policies in today’s world. In the absence of widespread domestic fentanyl abuse, China placed all fentanyl-related substances on a list of controlled substances upon the request of the US side as early as 2019, the first country in the world to do so.
Since then, no further notification has been received from the US regarding the seizure of such substances from China. According to the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), drug overdose deaths in the US dropped 24 per cent for the 12 months ending in September 2024.
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In recent years, China has engaged in practical counternarcotics cooperation with the US in a broad-based way. Since the establishment of the China-US Counternarcotics Working Group in January 2024, the two countries have convened multiple high-level meetings to promote bilateral dialogue and cooperation in drug control and law enforcement.