Vanda Felbab-Brown:
Well for well over a year we have had no meaningful cooperation from the government of China and frankly we have had minimal and in adequate cooperation from the government of Mexico as well.
In 2018, 2019, we had the height of China's cooperation in trying to stop the flows of precursors and fentanyl out of China. At the time China scheduled the entire class of fentanyl type drugs as a scheduled substance, requiring that permits are obtained for the production of fentanyl, class drugs and their exports.
And that's changed the patterns of the illegal trade. Instead of fentanyl being shipped directly to the United States, these precursor chemicals would now be shipped to Mexican cartels that sanitize fentanyl from it.
But after that China has significantly scaled back cooperation. Why? Because it had expected that the Trump administration would lessen the economic tariffs on Chinese goods. And then it expected that the Biden administration will take a softer geostrategic approach to China neither happened. In fact, we have seen significant increase in tensions between the two countries,
China in general subordinates its law enforcement cooperation with other countries to its other objectives. And with countries where the economic or geostrategic relationship is not what it wants, it weakens or altogether suspense cooperation.
The Biden administration has attempted to redress this lack of cooperation in several ways. One is the set of prosecutions that we are seeing. They found an important way to get around the fact that many of the precursors being sold and legal nonscheduled chemicals. It has also engaged the Chinese government when Secretary Blinken was in China in the spring, the issue of fentanyl and counter narcotics came up.
And that seemed to be a hopeful moment when Chinese officials, Chinese interlocutors started looking back and reviving the possibility of a joint fentanyl working group. Certainly seeing that move ahead would be important in July organizing the first summit of a global coalition against the threat of synthetic drugs. And hopefully this joint international effort to put pressure on China will pay off.
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