Bipartisan Senate Bill Seeks to Curb Flow of Fentanyl Into the US From China

China ‘has not done enough to curb the export of these chemicals to Mexican transnational criminal groups,’ Sen. Jeanne Shaheen said.

(L-R) Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) speaks with Sen. Jim Risch (R-Idaho) before the start of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee confirmation hearing for then-Sen. Marco Rubio to be Secretary of State, in Washington, on Jan. 15, 2025. Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images

A bipartisan legislation aimed at stopping the flow of fentanyl and its precursors into the United States was recently introduced in the Senate, with the aim of holding Chinese entities accountable for exporting these drugs.

Sens. Jim Risch (R-Idaho) and Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), chairman and ranking member of the Foreign Relations Committee respectively, introduced the “Break Up Suspicious Transactions of Fentanyl Act” on March 6. The legislation does not link to tariffs but aims to give the U.S. president more authority to impose sanctions on China’s state-owned or state-controlled entities, including financial institutes, for contributing to fentanyl trafficking.

“With the support of the Chinese government, China remains the single greatest source of fentanyl and synthetic opioid precursors to Mexican cartels,” Risch said in a statement. “These opioids then come across our southern border and kill over 100,000 Americans every year. This needs to end and the perpetrators need to be held accountable.”

Shaheen said the United States should “use every tool at our disposal to cut off the flow of fentanyl.”

“China is the primary supplier of fentanyl precursors fueling this epidemic, and it has not done enough to curb the export of these chemicals to Mexican transnational criminal groups who seek to traffic fentanyl into the U.S.,” Shaheen said.

She added that legislation will strengthen the United States’ ability to “hold Chinese entities accountable and disrupt the supply chains enabling this crisis.”

Under the Act, the secretary of state and the attorney general would need to submit a joint report to the appropriate congressional committees. The report would include topics such as future U.S. steps to urge China to combat the production and trafficking of fentanyl and synthetic opioids, and make efforts to address its financial system and money organizations related to the issue.

The secretary of state and the attorney general would also be required to provide a classified briefing to the appropriate congressional committees on U.S. efforts to obtain China’s approval to establish U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) offices in the two Chinese cities of Shanghai and Guangzhou.

If enacted, the legislation would encourage the Trump administration to identify individuals and entities in China engaged in the production and trafficking of the drugs, and target Chinese financial institutions that enable the laundering of the drugs’ proceeds, according to the press release.

On March 4, President Donald Trump imposed 25 percent across-the-board tariffs on Canada and Mexico, and 20 percent on all Chinese goods, saying the trade measures were a response to their handling of fentanyl, which has been smuggled into the United States in large quantities.

Days later, Trump announced a one-month reprieve for certain Canadian and Mexican imports.

In April last year, the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party released a report saying that Beijing was directly subsidizing the manufacture of illegal opioid analogues used by traffickers to make the drug outside of China.

In May 2024, the DEA released its 2024 National Drug Threat Assessment, noting that Mexico-based Sinaloa and Jalisco cartels “rely on chemical companies and pill press companies in China to supply the precursor chemicals and pill presses” needed to manufacture synthetic drugs.

“Drug trafficking organizations based in Mexico and South America are increasingly utilizing China-based underground banking systems as their primary money laundering mechanism,” the report says.

A Chinese national was sentenced to 10 years behind bars in December last year for laundering $62 million in illegal narcotics proceeds on behalf of Mexican drug traffickers.

Two House bills—the Stop Chinese Fentanyl Act (H.R.747) and the Stop Fentanyl Money Laundering Act (H.R.1577)—now await a House vote after advancing out of the Financial Services Committee on March 6.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.