WASHINGTON — The Trump administration has “strongly encouraged” China to execute some of its criminals who make and distribute chemicals used to produce illegal fentanyl, the White House has revealed.
Concerns about illicit fentanyl supplies flowing from China to the US loomed over President Trump’s high-stakes summit with Chinese leader Xi Jinping during their three-day DC summit last week.
Beijing has already answered some of those concerns by taking steps to crack down on illegal distribution of the deadly synthetic drug’s precursor chemicals, which have resulted in hundreds of thousands of American deaths over recent years, the Trump administration said.
“In August 2026, acting on information from U.S. law enforcement, China arrested 21 Chinese citizens for the manufacture and distribution of precursor chemicals to illicit drug producers in North America,” said a White House release on part of last week’s summit.
“The United States strongly encouraged maximum sentences, including the death penalty where applicable.”
Beijing made several other overtures to the US involving the countries’ war on drugs, too.
It imposed new export controls on two precursor chemicals that are shipped to producers in North America and classified orphines — synthetic opioids that can be 10 times more potent than fentanyl — as deadly drugs, the White House said.
Fentanyl is legal in the US but only under strict medical guidance when used as a treatment for severe or chronic pain.
Ahead of Xi’s visit, China rolled out tougher guidelines on fentanyl-related substances, too, vowing to ramp up investigations into the illegal distribution of those chemicals
Fentanyl overdose deaths peaked in the US in 2022 to date, with the drug killing nearly 74,000 Americans in a single year. Recent data indicate that the number of related deaths has since dropped dramatically, with opioid-related overdose deaths plunging to 44,564 in 2025, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
China has long been identified as the top supplier of the precursor chemicals that Mexican cartels use to produce fentanyl and other drugs such as methamphetamine as well as nitazenes. This is partly because of China’s dominance in chemical manufacturing.
Both the Biden and Trump administrations have pressured Beijing to crack down on the illicit distribution of those precursor chemicals, faulting China for not doing enough.
Trump slapped a 10% tariff on all exports from China last year, citing concerns about such exports of the precursor chemicals for fentanyl to the cartels in Mexico.
But such tariffs and others under his International Emergency Economic Powers Act were shut down by the US Supreme Court in February.
The US president rolled out the red carpet for Xi last week, the Chinese leader’s first visit to the White House since 2015 and first time on American soil since 2023.
Despite all the pomp and circumstance, few major breakthroughs appeared to emerge from the major summit, though the two sides made some progress in a few areas.
But the White House touted its progress on fentanyl, as well as Trump’s push to get China to boost petroleum refinement, Beijing’s gift of two more giant pandas, an artificial intelligence notification system and tariff relief on about $30 billion of goods.
