Gordon Chang tells Newsmax that Biden has the power to halt the influx of fentanyl

President Joe Biden can stop the flow of fentanyl coming into the United States, but he won’t take the steps he needs, author and China expert Gordon Chang said on Newsmax Friday, while discussing Biden’s meetings this week with Chinese President Xi Jinping. 

“He can close the border and he can impose costs on China that are so severe that they will stop the fentanyl flow,” Chang told Newsmax’s “American Agenda,” where he appeared with Victoria Coates, who was a deputy national security adviser under President Donald Trump.

Xi also has the power to shut down the fentanyl traffic, said Chang. 

“Fentanyl producers operate in a near-total surveillance society,” he said. “The Communist Party knows what these guys are doing. Chinese diplomats provide cover to the fentanyl gangs. They launder their money through the Chinese state banking system, and virtually every container that leaves China is inspected by a Chinese official.”

China promised the Trump administration in 2018 it would stop the fentanyl trade, Chang added, but it didn’t, so “They’re probably not going to do it now.”

Meanwhile, Biden and Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador Friday pledged to work together to confront illicit fentanyl trafficking into the U.S. and to work on the problem of the growing number of migrants traveling to the border between the two nations. 

Coates, though, called it “pitiful” on the part of the Biden administration to go to foreign leaders like Xi or Obrador to seek help with problems he should be solving himself. 

“This is our border,” she said. “He is the president of the United States. His top priority should be just to secure American sovereignty and to shut that border down.”

And by asking China and Mexico for help “when clearly they’re not going to,” that “makes us look bad on the world stage,” said Coates. 

Chang, meanwhile, said it will take at least six months to see if the promises the Chinese have made this week in San Francisco will be honored, which he thinks is unlikely. 

“We’re talking about things that the Chinese have talked to us before,” said Chang. “We have had intensive diplomacy with Beijing since the Cold War, and at that time, China’s behavior has just deteriorated over the course of decades.”

He added that he wants to know exactly what Biden said to Xi that has not been said before. 

“We need to try something new,” said Chang. “We’re going to have to take some severe measures if we’re going to protect our country.”

Coates also pointed out that Biden asked Xi for help with the issue of Iran and its financing of terrorist attacks against Israel on Oct 7. 

“Iran is almost entirely dependent, like Russia, financially on China, that’s not an action they would have taken without some kind of permission from Beijing,” said Coates. “If you look at it, the sort of imminent peace deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia for China. That’s a problem because they are also dependent on Saudi Arabia for a big chunk of their energy imports.”

If the Saudis are getting closer to the U.S. and Israel, “that means we might have some security control over that flow of energy, and that’s the last thing [the Chinese] want,” said Coates.

“So again, it is ludicrous for the president to ask for help on a problem he could stop by enforcing sanctions on [Iran’s] oil.”

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