Posted on 11/03/2025 5:56:27 AM PST by MtnClimber
China’s reluctant deal to curb fentanyl and ease trade tensions signals not surrender, but a strategic pause as America reasserts its strength at home and abroad.
China has tentatively agreed to curtail sales of fentanyl to Mexico and other Latin American nations.
For three decades, Beijing sent the raw product to Latin American and Mexican cartels. The gangs then processed and disguised the toxic brew as less lethal narcotics and prescription drugs for export. The cartels laundered the profits with additional Chinese help, along with the feigned ignorance of the Mexican government.
Since 1999, imported fentanyl-laced drugs have killed approximately 600,000 Americans through addiction and accidental overdoses. That number nears the death toll of all Americans killed during the Civil War.
Following Donald Trump’s recent visit with Chinese President Xi Jinping, China is reportedly set to lift restrictions on its rare earth mineral exports to the U.S. That was a self-interested move, since the U.S. and its allies were already mobilizing to become immune to Chinese cut-offs. Xi Jinping also agreed to resume purchases of U.S. soybeans.
Trump’s concessions include agreeing to reduce tariffs on Chinese goods to 47 percent, while maintaining tariffs on most Chinese imports at levels still higher than those of almost any other importing country.
No doubt, more details will emerge of other concessions. Both China and Trump’s domestic critics will undoubtedly seek to refute the administration’s insistence that the U.S. won most of the advantages.
For nearly half a century, over the Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, Bush II, Obama, Trump’s first, and Biden administrations, Americans more or less came to accept that more Americans would die from fentanyl than were lost in all foreign wars in U.S. history. If China really does comply with its agreement, and the cartels cannot find alternate sources
(Excerpt) Read more at amgreatness.com ...
VDH ping
Also a great point from VDH about Russia/Ukraine. We tend to think of it as Russia being a winner (they've gained land). But VDH points out: "After needlessly incurring one million casualties, Putin is terrified that his oligarchal class and officer castes increasingly see him as a 73-year-old, ill liability. He now fights only to inch westward, hoping to reach a symbolic DMZ line that would justify his military blunder. In a cost-to-benefit analysis, his four-year invasion does not compute well in the Kremlin." So yeah, Russia gained land in Ukraine. But probably reduced it's overall clout in the world, and certainly Putin's clout.
I don’t think Xi has the power to make the CCP princes, who profit from the drug trade, stop making and selling drugs. Like a flood finding a new path around each dike, the princes will continue the flood.
I’m sure that Xi’s lackies can find who is doing it, but probably anyone who could stop the production and sale is thoroughly bribed into inaction. Imagine in the US that you’re a Democratic president and some foreign government needs us to stop your top Democratic donor from doing this or that. The president will make promises. He may make some showy moves, but he won’t under any circumstance, damage that big donor. It’s essentially the same with Xi. That’s the way politics works.
Probably the drug sales are directly funding the CCP’s intelligence network. Recall what happened when the Soviet Union fell. They stopped paying the KGB and the KGB morphed instantly into the Russian mafia. Now picture the entire CCP intelligence operation going private overnight. Even if Xi could crack down, if he didn’t do it right, he’d make the problem a thousand times worse as the sales apparatus is probably hog tied by the CCP. Imagine it as a free market operation.
We should start taking all the final products that the cartels smuggle into the US and ship them back to China at random addresses or to Xi himself. What can they say or do about it? They would probably catch it at the ports of entry but at least they have to dispose of it, not us.
And yet we do the drugs to ourselves. Still pales to the other genocide we do to ourselves....abortion.
Yes, God loves us. Happy clappy.
Considering the Amazon Web Services outage followed a week later by the Microsoft/Azure outage I think Xi’s plan was to open the negotiation like this:
Xi: “How has your Internet been working lately Mr. President?
It would be a shame if all your Tech Infrastructure went south if you don’t agree to the trade terms we want.”
Xi’s hand was strong enough to pull it off however because of the economic downturn in China and he has a lot of critics in China nipping at his heels.
Conservative movements and governments are rebounding in Europe. So for Chinese strongman Xi Jinping, it was time to cut a deal, to pause, to regroup, and to hope that in three, seven, or eleven years, another Obama- or Biden-naif would return. And then it might finish its now half-century-long effort to relegate a calcifying U.S. to the 1950s version of the British Empire. Or so China assumed.
Longer column by Prof Hanson, but well worth your time.
FR Index of his articles: Victor Davis Hanson on FR
Town Hall: Victor Davis Hanson on Town Hall
American Greatness: Victor Davis Hanson on American Greatness
His website: Victor Davis Hanson The Sword of Perseus
One of his sponsors' website: The Daily Signal
Please let me know if you want on or off this new VDH ping list.
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He’s the best. I make it a point to listen to all his podcasts.
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