Trump says Beijing making ‘big steps’ in controlling fentanyl
The US president struck a different tone after previously using issue to justify tariffs on imports from China
US President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that Beijing is “making big steps” in efforts to control the flow of fentanyl, an issue that the American leader has used to justify tariffs that he has slapped on imports from China.
“I think China has been helping out,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. “I mean, it’s been a terrible situation for many years with fentanyl, but since I came here, we’re talking to them, and they’re making big steps ... You know that they’re being penalised with tariffs because of the fentanyl but they want to do something.”
Trump’s positive assessment differs sharply the strident tone that he used when announcing in February that the US would not only impose his originally outlined 10 per cent tariffs on all Chinese imports beginning on Tuesday, but that these were now being doubled for an effective rate of 20 per cent.
The comment also comes amid high-level negotiations between his team and Chinese counterparts to broker a climbdown on overlapping tariffs and other trade restrictions that the two sides have directed at each other.
“A large percentage of these Drugs, much of them in the form of Fentanyl, are made in, and supplied by, China,” Trump declared on his Truth Social account in February. “Until it stops, or is seriously limited, the proposed TARIFFS scheduled to go into effect on MARCH FOURTH will, indeed, go into effect, as scheduled.”
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Trump made the comments ahead of his official signing of a bill – Halt All Lethal Trafficking of Fentanyl Act or the HALT Fentanyl Act – that permanently places fentanyl-related substances into Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act into law.