Trump's team says tariffs 'a drug war, not a trade war' to stop fentanyl

(TNND) — The president’s tariffs are chiefly intended to pressure Mexico and Canada to help slow the flow of the deadly drug fentanyl into the United States, according to administration officials.

“What happened was that we launched a drug war, not a trade war,” President Donald Trump’s economic adviser Kevin Hassett told ABC News this weekend. “And it was part of a negotiation to get Canada and Mexico to stop shipping fentanyl across our borders.”

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem told CBS News that tariffs are meant to fight the import of the drug.

“It really is about fentanyl. It really is,” Noem said. “And I think the president obviously wants a strong economy, obviously wants better trade deals as well. But this is about fentanyl and what we can do to stop the cartels from partnering with Chinese officials, laundering money and bringing a poison into our country that is specifically designed to kill the next generation.”

Noem said she’s had detailed conversations with Canadian and Mexican officials about what they can do on their ends to avoid tariffs.

She said the U.S. needs access to their criminal background systems and is demanding those countries invest more in technology to secure their borders.

Trump has twice postponed at least some of the tariffs on imports from Mexico and Canada, so the future of the tariffs is unknown.

But the tariffs have made American consumers uneasy and sent shockwaves through the stock market.

Economists say tariffs spur inflation for American consumers, who are already feeling battered by high prices over the last several years.

“Tariffs are passed through to buyers at least in part, raising prices and decreasing demand for the impacted goods,” Scott Hoyt, Moody’s Analytics senior director, previously told The National News Desk.

James Knightley, ING’s chief international economist, told TNND that tariffs are a “lose-lose situation” that could cost American households thousands of dollars if they stick.

American consumers and businesses will make some substitutions from imported goods to soften the blow, he said.

"But America just doesn't have the manufacturing base to fulfill that full $3.1 trillion of stuff that we all keep buying," Knightley said in November, when Trump announced his intention of slapping 25% tariffs on products coming from Mexico and Canada. "So, there's inevitably going to be a cost-of-living erosion here or, a cost-of-living hit, spending power erosion."

The Conference Board reported that U.S. consumer confidence dropped sharply in February, citing expected impacts of tariffs.

And the University of Michigan's long-running consumer sentiment index showed Americans are worried that Trump’s tariffs will cause high inflation to come roaring back.

The tariffs are also damaging U.S. relations with our allies, said Terri Givens, a politics professor at the University of British Columbia in Canada.

“The word ‘betrayal’ is not an overstatement,” she said of how Canadians feel about Trump’s statements and policies toward them, including the tariffs.

And then, there’s the turmoil in the stock market.

So, are tariffs a good way to stop fentanyl?

“I can't believe intelligent people such as Kevin Hassett or Kristi Noem really believe what they're saying about this,” said Dr. Jeffrey A. Singer, a general surgeon and a senior fellow at the Cato Institute. “I think ... they're just using the fentanyl argument as a pretext to impose tariffs, which the president strongly believes, despite decades, centuries of history to the contrary, that this causes economic growth.”

Singer said tariffs won’t stop the “very dynamic, adaptable, unregulated” black market from shipping the deadly drug across our borders.

And he said most fentanyl and other illicit drugs are smuggled into the country by Americans and legal residents who can use legal border crossings even if Canada and Mexico join the U.S. in ramping up border security.

Singer’s Cato colleague David Bier, an immigration and border security expert, previously told TNND that U.S. citizens accounted for 89% of convicted fentanyl traffickers in 2022. And American citizens accounted for over 80% of such convictions in each of the previous four years.

Bier said cartels hire American drug mules for “good, rational” reasons. U.S. citizens are entitled to enter the country, and they’re under less scrutiny by border officers at checkpoints.

U.S. citizens also have homes on this side of the border, where they can stash the smuggled drugs.

Over 90% of fentanyl seizures occurred at legal crossing points or interior vehicle checkpoints, not on illegal migration routes, Bier said.

“There's a conflation between immigration and drug smuggling,” Bier told TNND last summer.

He noted that fentanyl-related deaths increased substantially in the U.S. in 2020, at a time when the pandemic raged and the border was largely closed.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection says that just over 5,400 pounds of fentanyl has been seized at the southwest border so far this fiscal year, with four months of data reported.

That’s a 22% decrease from the same period a year ago.

Just 10 pounds of fentanyl has been seized at the northern border so far this fiscal year.

No one is arguing that fentanyl is a big problem for Americans.

Fentanyl, a man-made opioid, is 50 times more potent than heroin and can be deadly in very small amounts.

Singer said fentanyl is mixed into other drugs, and Americans overdose often because they don’t realize fentanyl is present in the drug they are using or don’t realize how much fentanyl they are ingesting.

Embracing proven harm reduction strategies, not imposing tariffs, is a better way to save American lives from fentanyl overdoses, Singer said.

He advocated for access to fentanyl test strips, which are deemed illegal drug paraphernalia in a handful of states, and to the overdose reversal drug naloxone.

Syringe services programs and supervised consumption sites can also save lives, he said.

Harm reduction for illicit drug use has a bad rap, Singer said.

But he compared it to a doctor prescribing medication to control a person’s cholesterol or high-blood pressure.

“If I can get them to change their diet and lifestyle, I wouldn’t need to put them on a medication. But for whatever reason, either they don't want to, or they can't, or whatever, they're not changing their lifestyle,” he said. “So, when I prescribe these things for them, I'm basically engaging in harm reduction. I'm not endorsing what they're eating and the fact that they're not exercising. I'm just saying, well, let me do something for you that can make your decisions less risky.”