Tag: Fentanyl

China Meets the U.S. to Discuss Fentanyl, But the Détente Has Limits

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China and the United States are back at the negotiating table. Whether they can agree on much is another matter. In Bangkok, China’s top diplomat last week discussed North Korea and Iran with President Biden’s national security adviser. Days later, in Beijing, officials restarted long-stalled talks on curbing the flow of fentanyl to the United States. And the White House says Mr. Biden plans to speak by phone with China’s leader, Xi Jinping, in the spring. The developments point to a tentative détente struck by Mr. Biden and Mr. Xi…

Chinese and US officials meet in effort to stop flow of deadly fentanyl

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American and Chinese officials met on Tuesday to discuss joint efforts to stem the flow of fentanyl into the US, a sign of cooperation as the two global powers try to manage their contentious ties. The two-day meeting was the first for a new counternarcotics working group. One focus of the talks was fentanyl, the synthetic opioid that is ravaging the US, and in particular ingredients for the drug that are made in China. The Chinese president, Xi Jinping, agreed to restart cooperation in a handful of areas, including drug…

U.S. Moves to Crack Down on Money Behind Fentanyl Trade

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The Biden administration said on Monday that it was creating a “counter-fentanyl strike force” within the Treasury Department to combat trafficking of the drug into the United States by more aggressively scrutinizing the finances of suspected narcotics dealers. The Treasury’s office of terrorism and financial intelligence and the criminal investigation unit of the Internal Revenue Service will lead the new team. It will attempt to find and disrupt money laundering associated with fentanyl trafficking and to more effectively crack down on sanctions violations. Officials from Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network…

U.S. to Press China to Stop Flow of Fentanyl

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President Biden will press the Chinese leader Xi Jinping on Wednesday to crack down on the Chinese firms that are helping to produce fentanyl, a potent drug that has killed hundreds of thousands of Americans. An agreement to curb China’s illicit exports of fentanyl — and particularly the chemicals that can be combined to make the drug — could be one of the more significant achievements for the United States out of Mr. Biden and Mr. Xi’s meeting, which is taking place as leaders from Pacific nations gather for an…

Senator Chuck Schumer Leads Bipartisan Trip to China

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Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader, is leading a bipartisan congressional delegation on Friday to China, where the group plans to meet with top government and business leaders at a time of rising tensions between the United States and Beijing. Mr. Schumer, who has long taken a tough stand on China, said he would use the trip to appeal to the nation’s top leaders for better economic reciprocity for U.S. companies currently being iced out of Chinese markets and better policing of the export of…

U.S. Pressuring China on Fentanyl

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Just four years ago, a joint American and Chinese effort to stem the flow of fentanyl produced in China from reaching the United States appeared set to take off. Beijing had unveiled a sweeping new law banning the synthetic opioid, leading the Trump administration to praise China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, for “a wonderful humanitarian gesture.” Soon, Chinese and American law enforcement agents joined forces to investigate and prosecute fentanyl traffickers in China. But today, cooperation between the two countries on fentanyl is at an impasse. Mutual efforts to crack…

U.S. Charges 4 Chinese Firms With Selling Chemicals to Make Fentanyl

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Four chemical companies based in China and eight Chinese nationals have been charged with trafficking chemicals used by Mexican drug cartels to manufacture vast quantities of fentanyl later sold in the United States, federal officials said on Friday. The officials said that two of the Chinese defendants — the principal executive and marketing manager of one of the companies — had been arrested recently overseas and taken to Hawaii for a court appearance, and that they would be brought to Manhattan to face prosecution. The new indictments unsealed on Friday…