R epublicans are accusing the Biden administration of allowing the relationship between Chinese drug manufacturers and Mexican cartels to flourish amid a fentanyl crisis.

The Chinese government suspended its anti-drug efforts with the United States last month in retaliation for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) decision to visit Taiwan. Republicans have been sounding the alarm about the growing problem.

“The Biden administration has failed to hold Communist China accountable for its role in spreading fentanyl into American communities,” the Republican Study Committee said in a memo this week. “China is the number one producer of illicit fentanyl, fentanyl analogues, and precursor chemicals used to make fentanyl.”

The House GOP group, led by Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN), wrote: “President Donald Trump recognized this threat and successfully pressured China to schedule fentanyl-related substances as a class.”

The RSC continued: “However, we now know that a significant portion of China’s fentanyl manufacturing subsequently moved to Mexico where cartels set up their own operations to produce fentanyl using precursor chemicals from China.

“Unfortunately, the Biden administration’s weakness has allowed this deadly relationship between the cartels and Chinese actors to flourish,” it added.

The RSC also pointed to a letter by attorneys general in 18 states and territories that asked President Joe Biden to consider classifying illegal fentanyl as a “weapon of mass destruction.”

US INTEL COMMUNITY UNPREPARED FOR CHINESE ESPIONAGE

The Washington Examiner has reported on how Chinese money launderers and fentanyl-makers have gone into business with Mexican drug cartels and have made billions pushing fentanyl across the U.S. border. The Trump administration pressured Chinese leader Xi Jinping in 2019 to make fentanyl illegal there, but drug labs in Wuhan and elsewhere shifted to manufacturing the precursor ingredients for the drugs instead, and Chinese partnerships with drug traffickers in Mexico have expanded.

Last week, Biden named 22 foreign nations as being major drug transit or major illicit drug-producing countries last week. China was not on the list. But the president said, “We will look to expand cooperation with China, India, and other chemical source countries to disrupt the global flow of synthetic drugs and their precursor chemicals.”

Biden also signed an executive order in December concluding international drug trafficking “constitutes an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy” of the U.S.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry announced on Aug. 5 that it was implementing eight “countermeasures” in retaliation for Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan. Among the punitive actions, China said it was “suspending China-U.S. counternarcotics cooperation.”

“This epidemic will only intensify as Beijing suspends counter-narcotics cooperation with America,” Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) wrote last week. “We must put greater pressure on Beijing to control fentanyl production at its source, as well as the production of fentanyl precursors that Chinese dealers sell to traffickers in Mexico.”

Rubio added, “Most importantly, Biden and his fellow Democrats must stop undermining border security."

Rahul Gupta, the White House’s director of national drug control policy, said on Aug. 8 that he was "disappointed that China has chosen to disrupt its cooperation on the global issues of transnational crime and counternarcotics.” He contended that “China has played and must play a key role in helping disrupt the illicit flow of drugs like fentanyl and their precursor chemicals” and that “it’s unacceptable that the PRC is withholding its cooperation.”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that more than 107,600 Americans died of drug overdoses in 2021. More than 71,200 of those overdose deaths involved synthetic opioids, mainly fentanyl. The National Institutes of Health similarly concluded that “synthetic opioids other than methadone (primarily fentanyl) were the main driver of drug overdose deaths with a 6-fold increase from 2015 to 2020.”

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U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported that 12,900 pounds of fentanyl had been seized as of September, compared to 11,200 pounds of fentanyl seized in all of 2021.