Commentary: Big Tent Ideas

KENNETH RAPOZA: The Fight Against Fentanyl Must Start With Mexico

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Fentanyl kills more Americans aged 18 to 49 than any other health issue. We’ve seen death rates of about 300 Americans daily.

More will be added to fentanyl’s body count unless the U.S. takes the fight to Mexico. If you want to stop fentanyl, you have to enlist the Mexican government. But to enlist Mexico, you have to threaten its economy.

Most of our fentanyl comes in through Mexico. Last year, Customs and Border Protection seized a record 27,000 pounds of fentanyl at the border, up from 14,700 pounds in 2022. Either Customs is stemming the flow, or there is so much out there to capture that this number also suggests volumes are rising.

The death toll tells the story.

According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), more than 80,000 people died of opioid overdoses in 12 months ending August 2023. Fentanyl accounts for the majority of CDC’s synthetic opioid deaths. In 2016, some 10,000 people died of synthetic opioid overdoses. It’s up nearly eight times.

The government blames China and Mexico.

China is the primary supplier, according to the Drug Enforcement Agency, of the “precursor chemicals” and helps launder cash from the proceeds of drug sales. But the fentanyl crisis is Made in Mexico by the Sinaloa and Jalisco New Generation cartels, among others.

Congress knows we aren’t getting help from either country. China is unreliable and a rival. But Mexico is not much help.

“Clearly the Chinese and Mexican governments are not doing enough to combat the trafficking of fentanyl,” said Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio during a Jan. 11 Senate Banking Committee hearing addressing the fentanyl crisis.

Democratic Sen. Jon Tester of Montana called the fentanyl crisis a national security emergency. In his home state of Montana, Mexican cartels are buying up land.

Congress has a number of bills out to punish fentanyl pushers. Their favorite is the FEND Off Fentanyl Act. The bill was inserted into the Emergency National Security Appropriations Supplemental, a.k.a. the “border bill,” because the government considers fentanyl part of the border problem.

However, this bill will not stop the flow of fentanyl because it doesn’t allow Mexico to face any consequences for its inaction. All FEND Off does is sanction nine Mexican cartels and Chinese money laundering organizations. I think it will work as well as sanctioning Russian oligarchs worked to stop the Ukraine war.

Inside the bill is the ridiculous Chapter 3 (page 244) which states: “the authority or a requirement to block and prohibit all transactions in all property and interests in property shall not include a requirement to impose sanctions on the importation of goods.” This means you can’t threaten the Mexican goods trade.

Trump used that threat as leverage to get the “Remain in Mexico” policy going. Biden ended it in 2021. This bill removes that leverage.

Mexico only acts when forced to do so. These three things will get their attention.

1. Threaten tariffs on key exports like cars and white line goods. Washington will get free lobbying in Mexico City by Ford and Frigidaire.
2. Tax remittances. Ron DeSantis resuscitated this Trump idea. Remittances to Mexico hit a record $63.3 billion in 2023. Mexico’s oil company Pemex reported net revenue of $72.6 billion in 2021. Mexico gets the equivalent of a Pemex cash infusion thanks to Mexicans here; we get a national health crisis.
3. Nikki Haley said we should “send in our special operations and take out the cartels.” Of course, “the experts” hated this idea. Good thing they didn’t advise Nayib Bukele, the popular president of El Salvador who just won reelection in a landslide after rounding up MS-13 and putting them all in prison. Now MS-13 is running around New York City.

We can drone strike a Yemeni wedding, collateral damage be damned, but can’t take out a Mexican fentanyl lab or blow up a few Go-Fast boats in Tijuana used by smugglers.

Washington should tell Mexico: “Either you cut fentanyl shipments in half and help us police this border, or we whack you with 25% tariffs in the name of national security.”

Make them sweat. Nothing else is.

Kenneth Rapoza is a former staff reporter for the WSJ in Brazil and covered China and other emerging markets for Forbes between 2011 and 2023. He is an analyst at the Coalition for a Prosperous America.

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.