President Trump has declared that the illegal transit into the U.S. of migrants and drugs, chiefly fentanyl, is a national emergency, and he has targeted Mexico, Canada and China with tariffs to force them to halt the flow.
How fentanyl became part of the tariff equation comes down to the production and smuggling of an opioid that has caused the overdose deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans.
The U.S. has long pressured Mexico, by far the main source of fentanyl, to do more to halt the drug’s production and export, and the money-laundering activities that are vital to the drug trade. Canada entered the picture because of the growing presence of Mexican cartels there.
