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The 370-page Emergency National Security Supplemental Appropriations Act [ [link removed] ], a.k.a. the “border bill,” is dead. But one 24-page chapter in the bill, called the FEND Off Fentanyl Act, is not. That bipartisan, bicameral piece of legislation wants to starve the fentanyl drug runners through sanctions against specific Mexican drug cartels and Chinese money-laundering organizations. Note to Congress: Did sanctioning Russian money men [ [link removed] ] stall Russia’s war with Ukraine? Has it hurt the Russian economy, which grew [ [link removed] ] more than that of the EU [ [link removed] ] last year? Obviously not.
Most fentanyl (“fetty”) comes in through the U.S.-Mexico border. This is why FEND Off was included in the border bill. FEND Off has bipartisan support [ [link removed] ]—10 Democrats and six Republicans signed onto the House bill written by Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas). The Senate has an identical bill, sponsored by Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), with 68 co-sponsors. [ [link removed] ] Cleary, this is an issue of great and grave concern to many elected officials, whether they represent border states or not.
It’s unclear whether FEND Off will become a standalone bill that gets voted on someday or will be inserted in yet some other monstrosity piece of legislation. Either way, as it stands, the FEND Off Fentanyl Act will do nothing to stop the flow of fentanyl into the United States, as popular as this bill might be.
Going after Chinese money-laundering organizations and members of the Sinaloa cartel, among others, will make it harder for members of these groups to sell U.S. stocks or visit their girlfriends at the mansions they bought for them on Star Island [ [link removed] ]. Fine. A few months later they will have new millions after new drug sales that go toward the zombification of iconic cities like San Francisco, and they can ask their Chinese money-laundering organizations to pay them in gold bars or crypto instead. From their drug sales, they can buy a house in Dubai or maybe put a down payment on a place in The Line [ [link removed] ] in Saudi Arabia.
Keep in mind that the former head of the Sinaloa cartel, Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, has been serving a life sentence in a Colorado prison since 2019, Yet the Sinaloa business is still booming. His four sons—Iván, Alfredo, Joaquín and his youngest, Ovidio Guzmán López, who is now in U.S. custody—run the business. Chips off the old block, those guys.
Despite the sanctioning powers of the Treasury Department, the U.S. has not sought to impose them against Mexico as a whole, even as the fetty crisis worsens. If Washington wants to severely wound this trade, it has to go harder. It has to go after the Mexican economy, not just a few individuals. If Mexico will not act to fight nine cartels at a time—a gnarly task for sure—or stop the flow of migrants from its country, then at the very least, the U.S. must make Mexico’s inaction a problem for its president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador. The way to do that is by threatening the Mexican economy.
The Fetty Trade as Seen by the Drug Enforcement Administration
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [ [link removed] ], more than 78,000 people died of synthetic opioid overdoses in a year as of August 2023, and another 80,000 died from heroin. Fentanyl is a synthetic and accounts for the majority of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s synthetic opioid deaths. To give that number some perspective, in 2016, some 10,000 people died of synthetic opioid overdoses. It’s up nearly eight times.
Last year, Customs and Border Protection [ [link removed] ] seized a three-year record high of 28,000 pounds of fetty at the border, up from 16,600 pounds in both 2022 and 2021. This can be viewed as good news or bad. Either Customs is stemming the flow and less is coming in through the border, or there is so much more of it out there to capture that volumes are rising and more is seeping through the border than previously.
Many on Capitol Hill like to blame China for the fentanyl crisis, complaining that it sells the “precursor chemicals” to the cartels that make the powdered drug. According to the Drug Enforcement Administration [ [link removed] ], labs that make the chemical ingredients for sale to the cartels are working with Chinese people in the U.S. Those Chinese nationals and U.S. citizens of Chinese descent work with street gangs to sell drugs. They have Chinese contacts in Mexico who work with Sinaloa, Jalisco and other cartels to launder the proceeds from drug sales.
It is a complicated web, but this is the process that proponents of the FEND Off Fentanyl Act think it can disrupt via sanctioning those involved.
Misplaced Blame
China takes the heat more often than not on the fetty crisis, something many have called China’s version of the Opium Wars imposed on the U.S., though the U.S. was never part of the two Opium Wars in China [ [link removed] ], which were fought in the mid-19th century against the British and French. However, Xi Jinping recently told President Biden [ [link removed] ], at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting in San Francisco last November, that he would go after the labs selling the chemicals to the cartels. Obrador never says such things. 
What has Mexico done to stop illegal border crossings or even to trim fentanyl production? Without pressure from the U.S., the answer is nothing. Whatever Mexico has done at home to curb fetty has obviously failed. So, we have two choices: Either end the fetty crisis, or just let people get stoned because that’s what they want to do with their time—and let sections of American cities fall into decay.
At a Senate Banking Committee hearing [ [link removed] ] on January 11, country music star and former drug dealer Jason “Jelly Roll” DeFord was the headline witness to discuss “legislative solutions” to the fentanyl crisis. Unfortunately, most of the proposed solutions singled out China but not Mexico.
During the Q&A period, Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT) said the U.S. needs to categorize the fentanyl crisis as a national security emergency “because it is one.” Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) asked if we could designate China complicit in terrorism against the United States: “This is a weapon of chemical warfare entering our country. Can’t we pressure them to stop it?” Christopher Urben, a former Drug Enforcement Administration agent, testified that sanctions in the FEND Off bill were “a real opportunity” and that, once applied, the U.S. could “dramatically increase the scale of sanctions against China companies selling precursor chemicals.”
But Mexico was in another world, almost as if Congress perceived the country as a victim of the poor Chinese money launderers and chem labs in Guangzhou. Oddly enough, though, it’s Mexican cartels that are buying up land in Montana [ [link removed] ]. It’s not the Chinese bad guys doing that, but U.S. policymakers are all obsessed with China.
Some people in the hearing did at least acknowledge that Mexico’s actions play a role, though. “With the cartels’ ability to corrupt governments, Mexico’s work has been very limited,” Urben said. And Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ), who also has proposed a bill on sanctions called the Strengthening Sanctions on Fentanyl Act [ [link removed] ], said, “We have to put pressure on Mexico.”
Strong on China, Too Weak on Mexico
Yes, you do, senator. But none of these bills would do that.
In fact, FEND Off Fentanyl actually prohibits sanctions on imported goods. This prohibition was explicitly spelled out in the border bill, but it is still in the FEND Off Fentanyl Act, though not stated as clearly. The bill says all trade in goods shall be exempt from sanctions. One could argue that language refers only to goods sold by the sanctioned entity, which in this case is the cartel. But that interpretation leads to the nonsensical conclusion that the government would sanction narcotics, which are the only good the cartels sell—that and maybe weapons. My interpretation is that all goods are exempt from sanction threats, period. (This holds for China goods too, by the way.) If I’m right, the act wouldn’t put any pressure on Mexico or China trade.
A better policy was President Trump’s threat to use tariffs against Obrador. [ [link removed] ] He basically said, “Help us at the border, or I’m ending NAFTA.” That led to the “Remain in Mexico” [ [link removed] ] policy, which Mexico hated. Even Biden called [ [link removed] ] it “dangerous and inhumane” in 2020 and formally ended [ [link removed] ] it a year later. Yet the policy was effective in that it slowed illegal border crossings, a cash cow for cartels [ [link removed] ] and gateway for fetty smugglers. [ [link removed] ] If signed into law, the FEND Off Fentanyl Act would make it hard for a president to implement such a policy again. A key piece of leverage would be lost.
Like the Remain in Mexico policy or hate it, it serves as an example: If you want to get the Mexican government to act on the border you have to threaten its whole economy. 
Taking Action
One risky move the U.S. could pursue is to threaten the importation of Mexican autos and kitchen appliances into the U.S. Make Ford and Frigidaire panic. Washington would get free lobbying on its behalf by all the manufacturing partners and subsidiaries of the U.S. exporters in Mexico who do not want the hammer of 25% (or pick a number) tariffs dropping down on their heads. Make them sweat—nothing else is.
While tariffs are unpopular with those who favor free trade, in this case they may be a necessary evil. The U.S. has so far been weak in its dealings with Mexico, and the lack of attention we’ve paid to its role in the fentanyl crisis only bolsters Mexico’s confidence that we’ll never take this fight seriously. Tariffs may be the only way to show Mexico that the U.S. means business. If Mexico’s economy takes a serious hit by being at a disadvantage with its most important trade partner, perhaps the government will finally be motivated to crack down on its drug cartels.
The Cali and Medellín cartels in Colombia didn’t die out because of sanctions. They died out because of police action and shoot-outs. If Mexico doesn’t want to do that, and if that is too much even for the U.S. to consider, then the next best thing is threatening Mexican trade. The U.S. should tell Obrador: “Either you cut fetty shipments in half by a certain date and help us police this border, or we whack you with 25% tariffs in the name of national security.” Everything else is just pretending.

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