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A bottle of Fentanyl pharmaceuticals is displayed in Anyang city
US cracks down on China’s role in fentanyl crisis
The US Justice Department filed criminal charges against four Chinese chemical companies and eight Chinese nationals on Friday, accusing them of trafficking fentanyl precursor chemicals to the Sinaloa cartel. Two high-ranking employees at the Chinese company, Amarvel Biotech, were arrested in Hawaii. The indictments mark the first time that Chinese producers, rather than cartel members, are being prosecuted for their alleged role in the US fentanyl epidemic.
Fentanyl is the leading cause of death for Americans under 50, responsible for 110,000 overdoses in 2022. The escalating death toll is pushing Washington to crack down on the foreign and domestic forces responsible for the drug crisis.
Fentanyl has been coming to the US from China since 2013. After the US pressured China to regulate the drug in 2019, manufacturers shifted to producing its raw materials, chemically camouflaging them for shipment, and giving cartels the scientific know-how to manufacture it in their own laboratories.
The crackdown on China’s fentanyl traffickers comes amid increasingly strained tensions between the two countries. China stopped cooperating with US counter-narcotic efforts after Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan last year, but it agreed to participate in a joint effort to clamp down on precursor chemicals during Secretary of State Anthony Blinken’s visit to Beijing last week– one of the few areas of progress to come from the visit.
But any joint efforts appear unlikely in the wake of the indictments. Beijing has “strongly condemned” the charges, accusing the US of unlawfully arresting Chinese nationals and using China as a scapegoat for its drug crisis.
Blinken meets Xi in Beijing
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: Hi, everybody. Ian Bremmer here, and Tony Blinken is not. No, he's coming back from Beijing, the US Secretary of State, the once-postponed and now-on-again weekend trip to Beijing. It's the first time he, as Secretary of State, has been there. Also, this was a last-moment meeting that included President Xi Jinping, and that's very important because on the ground in China, no attention being given publicly to the trip until Xi meets with Blinken, 35 minutes long, and then suddenly it is everywhere, and it's over 1 billion views, and it's all over state media, and it's all over social media. In a sense, the Chinese blessing the visit to their public and showing that they want to have a more constructive or at least stable relationship.
The other takeaway, marginal but still not unimportant, is the willingness to create a fentanyl working group. That's something the Americans have been pressing on for a while, which provides a little bit of cover for Biden that he's actually getting something done with the Chinese. Of course, the proof of the pudding is in the eating, and execution on that is something that everyone is going to be skeptical about and watching.
Okay, that's the good news. What's the bad news? There is no trust within this relationship. The US-China relationship continues to be very contentious, very conflictual. It's true that the Chinese gave their standard speaking points on Taiwan, and we can go to war, and we maintain the status quo. The Americans said, "We're not changing the status quo, and we don't want war." And everything will be fine. But the status quo is changing. The status quo is changing in a couple of ways. First of all, the Americans are doing whatever they can to make Taiwan less important. The export controls on Taiwan's semiconductors. Let's keep in mind that until very recently, until about a year ago, TSMC was producing 92% of the most important semiconductors in the world. The highest speed, smallest, fast. This is critical. Suddenly, that's down to 80%. Why? Because the Americans want to get away from vulnerability to Taiwan.
That's going to be down to 50% probably within five years. And as that happens, you've got Foxconn now moving all of their supply chain away from mainland China and towards India and Vietnam and Canada and other countries. Why are they doing that? And the answer is because the Americans see the status quo as risky, and they're trying to de-risk the status quo, which means less exposure to Taiwan, which makes a lot of sense for the Americans. But if you're the Chinese, you see that as actually leading to confrontation. You're saying, "Wait a second, we no longer have the ability to get access to this high-level technology. We have to build it ourselves." So when they do that and Taiwan becomes less important, it of course, becomes an area that's easier to have direct conflict.
Part of the reason the Americans were able to put unprecedented levels of sanctions against the Russians is because the Americans do almost no business with the Russians, Taiwan becomes less important, and the Americans de-risk the broader US-China relationship. It becomes easier to have confrontation with the Chinese, and as the Chinese take similar steps, they do the same thing. The one thing that didn't happen in this meeting was a willingness to re-engage on the military-to-military front. The Americans have been asking for it. Chinese have said no. They continue to say no this weekend. At the same time that the Chinese have taken really aggressive measures in the Taiwan Straits, in the South China Sea that potentially could risk direct accident/conflict with American military warships, jet fighters operating in the area. The fact that the Chinese are willing to tolerate that level of risk is they would argue analogous to the Americans being willing to tolerate greater levels of risk around the broader US-China relationship and around Taiwan.
That's not going to change. It's not going to change because Biden thinks he's got the right policies right now for China, because the politics of the relationship are heavily constrained by hawkish Democrats and Republicans, and because we're heading into the 2024 election. Now, the one thing that's useful is that in this relationship, Biden and Xi know each other well, they've known each other for a long time. Biden actually speaks with a lot of pride about that when you talk to him personally about how much time he spent with Xi. Not that he necessarily likes everything about him or trusts everything he says, but he respects him as a leader as opposed to Biden's view of Putin, which is exactly the opposite. That means that when they meet face-to-face, maybe there'll be a video call soon, but certainly looks likely on the sidelines of the APEX Summit in San Francisco this fall. Biden's going to go for a couple of days. That has the potential to strengthen the stabilization of the relationship, even as the structural forces are heading more towards conflict. I wish I had better news, but I'm glad the meeting happened. I'm glad it went as well as it actually did.
The Graphic Truth: The opioid death toll in US vs. Canada
The US and Canada are the world’s first and second-largest consumers of opioids per capita. And while both would love to relinquish their titles, it gets worse: Thanks to the explosion in fentanyl use in recent years, overdose deaths – as little as 2mg can be fatal – have skyrocketed.
The epidemic stems from big pharma’s false claims that opioid pain relievers were not addictive, which led to their widespread distribution. It’s also led to plenty of legal wrangling. Just this week, the Sackler family, whose pharmaceutical company, Purdue Pharma, has been at the heart of the crisis, was granted immunity from civil legal claims in the US in exchange for $6 billion to be paid to help combat the opioid epidemic.
We take a look at the toll opioids have taken in the US and Canada over the past six years (Note: 2022 Canadian figures are incomplete).
A chart comparing life expectancy in the US with the rest of the G-7 countries.
The Graphic Truth: No country for old men
US life expectancy has declined two years in a row, meaning that babies born today are expected to live about 2.5 years less than those born in 2019, according to the CDC. Americans on average will now kick the bucket at 76, the lowest age in the 21st century — and more than six years earlier than the rest of the G-7.
The biggest contributor to Americans’ shortening life spans is drug overdoses, especially from fentanyl. The pandemic — and the mental health crisis that ran alongside it — is also to blame. The US saw more COVID deaths than other G-7 nations, while fatalities from suicide and alcohol-induced liver failure skyrocketed. Many of these deaths were of young people, which has a compounded effect on the national average.
While COVID took a toll on life expectancy across the G-7, all but the US rebounded after the first year. The US knocked off a whopping 1.3 years in life expectancy between 2019 and 2020 and has continued to slide. The speed of America’s decline marks the biggest two-year drop in life expectancy since 1921.
The common wisdom is that wealthier countries should enjoy higher life expectancies than poorer ones, as they have the resources to invest in healthcare and better standards of living. This rings true for the rest of the G-7, which have a combined average life expectancy of 83 years old. But the US — the only G-7 country without free national healthcare — has lagged behind throughout the 21st century, plateauing at 78 in 2008 while fellow G-7 nations continued to climb.
We compare US life expectancy to the G-7 average (minus America) since 2000.
Seized narcotics at a press conference in Montgomery, Alabama.
Hard Numbers: Fentanyl record in the US, Rohingya refugees stranded, “bomb cyclone” steals Christmas, meet Israel’s new government, SBF pals plead guilty
10,000: The fentanyl crisis in the United States is out of control. The Drug Enforcement Administration said it seized more than 10,000 pounds of the deadly stuff this year, double that of 2021. Federal agents say that’s enough to kill every single American.
160: At least 160 Rohingya refugees are stranded in a rickety boat in waters near the Andaman Islands, an Indian territory, having fled horrid conditions at a refugee camp in Bangladesh. Indian vessels have reportedly approached the boat that was aiming for Malaysia but have so far not helped the stranded people disembark.
50: Nearly 50 million Americans are under winter weather storm warnings as a “bomb cyclone” is expected to hit the midwest and northeast just as millions of people are preparing to travel for the holidays. Some airlines are offering travelers payouts to avoid the airport madness and ditch their flights … and miss Christmas with their families. Good deal or bad deal?
63: After his party won the most votes in last month’s general election, Israel’s comeback kid Benjamin Netanyahu announced that he’s formed a new government – the most right-wing in Israel’s history. This comes as a bill advanced through the Knesset on Wednesday – with 63 votes in favor, 53 opposed – that would make the police commissioner “subordinate” to the incoming (extreme right) Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir.
2: Two of now-disgraced FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried’s associates pleaded guilty to fraud and will cooperate with US prosecutors investigating the collapse of the bankrupt crypto exchange fund. SBF himself was extradited from the Bahamas to New York and is scheduled to appear before a Manhattan judge on Thursday to face criminal charges.