The United States and China announced they would step up the fight against fentanyl as part of a new trade deal. But the details are slight, and it is not clear if the arrangement addresses the key issue: the role designer precursor chemicals play in fueling the illicit trade.
The agreement came after an October 30 meeting between Chinese President Xi Jinping and US President Donald Trump in Busan, South Korea, which centered on economic and trade relations. The deal also included a commitment by China to “halt the flow of precursors used to make fentanyl into the United States,” according to a White House fact sheet.
“Specifically, China will stop the shipment of certain designated chemicals to North America and strictly control exports of certain other chemicals to all destinations in the world,” the fact sheet added.
In return, the United States said it will drop tariffs it imposed earlier this year on Chinese goods entering the country from 20% to 10%.
Trump claimed in a social media post following the meeting that this was because China agreed to “work diligently with us to stop the flow of fentanyl into our country.” He added that the Asian nation will help “end the fentanyl crisis” but did not elaborate.
InSight Crime sought more details, but the State Department referred InSight Crime’s request for comment to the White House, and the White House declined to comment beyond the president’s public statement.
For its part, the Chinese government made no mention of any agreement related to fentanyl in an official readout of the meeting between the two leaders. And China’s Foreign Affairs Ministry did not respond to a request for more information before the time of publication.
Absence of Designer Precursors Undermines Fentanyl Fight
The key issue left unaddressed in public statements is that of designer precursors. These are the chemicals that are created for a specific purpose, such as the production of illicit synthetic drugs, and are not regulated.
Governments have a difficult time controlling them, and when controls are instituted, chemical producers simply tweak the formula so they remain outside the purview of the regulations and legal codes.
InSight Crime has heard firsthand how this works. In 2023, for example, independent fentanyl producers in Sinaloa — the epicenter of illicit production in Mexico — told InSight Crime they were receiving slightly modified versions of 1-BOC-4-piperidone and 4-piperidone. The International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) subsequently added them to its list of controlled chemical substances. About a year later, we found it again, this time purveyors of Chinese precursors told InSight Crime they were sending alterations of 1-BOC-4-hydroxypiperidine and (2-bromoethyl) benzene as a way of avoiding international controls.
It is not clear if these types of issues will be addressed, but, speaking on Fox News, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the two countries would establish “working groups that over the coming weeks will set very objective measures on whether” China’s commitments are “successful or not.”
The US government has also been frustrated by the lack of prosecutions or sanctions of Chinese producers. For its part, US prosecutors have tried to fill this gap by targeting several precursor chemical brokers in recent years. Most recently, on October 23, Mexican authorities extradited a Chinese chemical broker to the United States who allegedly maintained ties with both the Sinaloa Cartel and Jalisco Cartel New Generation (Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación – CJNG).
Meanwhile, the US Treasury Department has sanctioned several Chinese chemical companies over the years for their alleged role in supplying fentanyl precursors to criminal networks in North America. In one recent case, US prosecutors in the Southern District of Ohio indicted four Chinese chemical companies and over 20 individuals, some of whom InSight Crime investigated for a previous report.
China is one of the main suppliers of precursor chemicals for illicit fentanyl production but has taken a number of steps in recent years to combat the trade. In July 2025, for example, the government labeled a potent class of synthetic opioids called nitazenes and its analogues as controlled substances, which made their production, sale, or trafficking illegal. China also put controls on numerous fentanyl-related substances in 2017, and then again in 2019.
Still, the trade has continued, and Trump has sought to leverage this issue for economic advantage, though these efforts may have missed the mark.
“The core problem does not appear to be addressed anywhere, namely that most of the precursors today are non-scheduled chemicals,” said Vanda Felbab-Brown, a Brookings Institution scholar and one of the world’s preeminent experts on the illicit fentanyl trade, referencing the designer precursors.
This is problematic due to the “constant innovations surrounding how to cook fentanyl from non-scheduled precursors,” she added.
What’s more, Felbab-Brown said there are a number of blind spots in the Chinese legal code that have helped chemical producers skirt law enforcement.
“The lack of material support clauses, the lack of racketeering and conspiracy clauses, and the limitations on acting against non-scheduled precursors have been the big hole in Chinese law enforcement,” Felbab-Brown told InSIght Crime.
“That’s the big issue to focus on in the bilateral relationship, whether through confrontational means or cooperative, innovative means,” she said.
Featured image: US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping meet in South Korea. Credit: Reuters
