Since taking office, President Donald Trump has thrown global markets into turmoil with tariff threats, which he seems to alter depending in part on world leaders’ ability to coddle him. After Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum spoke with Trump on Thursday and persuaded him to postpone a tax on goods from Mexico, Trump lavishly praised her.
“Our relationship has been a very good one, and we are working hard, together, on the Border, both in terms of stopping Illegal Aliens from entering the United States and, likewise, stopping Fentanyl,” he wrote on Truth Social. “Thank you to President Sheinbaum for your hard work and cooperation!”
Only 1% of the fentanyl ravaging U.S. communities comes through the Canadian border.
Conversely, he mocked Canada’s Justin Trudeau, claiming the outgoing prime minister was using tariffs to remain in office. “I told him that many people have died from Fentanyl that came through the Borders of Canada and Mexico, and nothing has convinced me that it has stopped,” he said. “I then realized he is trying to use this issue to stay in power.” Nevertheless, Trump extended the grace period for tariffs on Canadian products, though the postponement applies to fewer goods than Mexico’s reprieve.
As it stands, the U.S. will still institute a 25% tariff on goods from Mexico and Canada on April 2 (in addition to 20% tariffs levied on China). And throughout the flip-flops on trade, Trump’s reasons have remained consistent: the flow of asylum-seekers and fentanyl.
As vibes-based political theater, tying tariffs to drug policy makes sense. Fentanyl and opioids more broadly have been lethal blights on America for over a decade, and their toll has been particularly high in communities that have been devastated by decades of free trade neoliberalism. There’s the added benefit, for Trump’s anti-immigrant agenda, of linking people crossing the border to the drug trade.
But treating tariffs as real-world policy to battle fentanyl deaths is, of course, bonkers. Only 1% of the fentanyl ravaging U.S. communities comes through the Canadian border. Very few people cross the U.S. border “illegally” through Canada. And regardless of the border, 89% of fentanyl traffickers convicted in 2022 were U.S. citizens. After all, why would a cartel strap its precious cargo to an asylum-seeker who has to jump trains, cross the dangerous Darien Strait and possibly get turned back based on whims of U.S. border policy, when U.S. citizens can easily ferry fentanyl across the border in their cars?
Then, there is the happy news that fentanyl overdose deaths have dropped — a lot. The decline began long before Trump devoted his second term to making avocados more expensive. Last month, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported a 24% decline in overdose deaths: 87,000 people in the U.S. lost their lives to drug overdoses from October 2023 to September 2024, down from 114,000 in the previous 12-month period. “That’s more than 70 lives saved every day,” said Allison Arwady, director of CDC’s National Center for Injury Prevention and Control.
The most important intervention, which might require a bigger investment than belittling world leaders on social media, is public health.
There are improvements in the fight against opioids across the board. There is more access to naloxone, an overdose reversal drug. There is easier access to buprenorphine, also known as Subutex, which curbs cravings for opioids. “It’s definitely something to write home about. We see a decline in deaths, hospital admissions, ambulance calls,” says Dr. Daliah Heller, director at Vital Strategies, a global public health organization.
“The decline has no connection to tariffs,” Heller adds. Cracking down on supply doesn’t work, she says. It’s basic economics: If there’s demand, the suppliers will deliver. “For 50 years the attention was on supply reduction — going after drug markets. What we see over and over is that these interventions don’t destroy the drug market; it just moves it.”
She observes that even if you can temporarily make it harder to move a drug — the tariffs on China are ostensibly about the shipment of ingredients that go into fentanyl — another will take its place. “In an era of synthetic substances, the choices are endless,” she says. Something even worse than fentanyl could easily flood the drug supply. In broad strokes, that’s what happened: Fentanyl overtook street heroin, which had replaced prescription opioids as the primary national addiction disaster.
Heller chalks up the downtrend in overdose deaths to harm reduction policies. In 2023, the Food and Drug administration approved Narcan, a nasal spray version of naloxone, as an over-the-counter medication, making the lifesaving substance more widely available. And many states have increased access to drug-testing strips, which tell people what drug they’re taking and make it easier to avoid accidental overdoses.
At the same time, Heller notes, public messaging has led to people making healthier decisions about their drug use. “There’s more knowledge about the dangers of fentanyl. People are more aware. They’re adjusting their drug use, rationally, to be protective.”
“People aren’t trying to die,” she says. The most important intervention, which might be categorized as “woke” and require a bigger investment than belittling world leaders on social media, is public health. “Care. Treatment.” Heller says. “As well as social determinants like housing, education and jobs, for people to feel integrated into society, to lead happy, healthy lives.” Such measures may not appeal to Trump’s MAGA philosophy. But, unlike tariffs, they will work.
