President Donald Trump says rampant drug smuggling and overdose deaths are largely the fault of three countries – Canada, China and Mexico – and he says tough tariffs are the answer. But Canada plays almost no role in the U.S. overdose crisis and drug deaths have been plummeting.
Andrew Harnik/Getty Images/Getty Images North America
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Andrew Harnik/Getty Images/Getty Images North America
President Donald Trump confirmed Thursday that new 25 percent tariffs will go into effect March 4th against two of the U.S.’s largest trading partners. Trump also threatened to add an additional 10 percent tariff on Chinese goods and services on the same date.
Writing on Truth Social, Trump once again cited street drugs “pouring into our country from Mexico and Canada at very high and unacceptable levels” as a primary reason for the policy.
But federal data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection show Canada plays almost no role in the smuggling of fentanyl or other deadly street drugs into the U.S. Despite that fact, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau promised in December to step up efforts to secure the northern border.
“By deploying new helicopters, drones, and surveillance tools. By adding new scanners and sniffer dog teams to stop and seize fentanyl. By cracking down on the money laundering that’s funding cross-border crime,” Trudeau said, detailing new policy initiatives in a post on social media.
Asked on Thursday about data showing Canada isn’t a significant player in the U.S. addiction crisis, Trump argued that drugs are coming across the northern border without being detected.
“They should be apprehending much more, cause a lot comes through Canada and as Mexico gets stronger in terms of the border it comes through Canada,” Trump said, without offering evidence to back his claim.
Meanwhile, fentanyl smuggling across the southern border from Mexico has plunged over the last year with seizures in January 2025 down 50 percent compared with a year earlier. Street drug experts say in many parts of the U.S., the availability and potency of fentanyl has dropped significantly.
The number of total overdose deaths from street drugs has also fallen at an unprecedented pace, down by nearly a quarter over the last year.
Many states have seen a decline in fatal overdoses of between 30 and 50 percent, according to provisional data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
“It’s very, very exciting to see,” said Dr. Nora Volkow, head of the U.S. government’s National Institute on Drug Abuse, speaking last week about the drop in drug deaths.
She noted that the decline in deaths linked to fentanyl, as opposed to other street drugs, is even greater. “From fentanyl it’s a 30.6 percent [drop] in one year, that’s a huge reduction,” she said.
Despite rapid improvements in a public health crisis that has killed hundreds of thousands of Americans, street drugs remain a political flashpoint.
“The families of the victims are devastated and, in many instances, virtually destroyed,” Trump said in his post on social media. “We cannot allow this scourge to continue to harm the USA.”
In addition to 25 percent tariffs on goods and services from Canada and Mexico, Trump threatened China will face an additional 10 percent tariff on the same date. China is a major source of industrial chemicals used by drug gangs to produce fentanyl, though the government of China has cracked down on suppliers over the last year.
While pointing to drug smuggling as a rationale for tariffs, Trump has also pardoned individuals who faced federal drug charges, including Ross Ulbricht, creator of a dark web internet market called Silk Road.
Ulbricht was convicted of distributing narcotics, among other charges, and sentenced to life in prison in 2015.
Trump’s pardon of January 6 riot defendants has also been extended by the U.S. Justice Department to include individuals facing drug-related charges.