Biden and Xi's Fentanyl Compromise: What Will It Accomplish?

In the words of the guy who sings "War (What Is It Good For)": Absolutely nothing!

Yesterday President Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping met outside of San Francisco.

Considering U.S.-China relations have been awful recently, this was a big deal, and among the topics discussed were the exports of fentanyl precursors by Chinese companies.

Fentanyl precursors — the most important ingredients needed to make fentanyl — are driving the U.S. drug crisis. China makes the precursors and the Mexican cartels buy them, finish the fentanyl and send the drugs north across the border.

The cartels could make fentanyl from scratch, but they couldn’t do so nearly as cheaply as using ingredients from China.

Many of these fentanyl precursors are legal in China, and the US has long been pressuring China to ban them. But that’s not the main issue. Even if all the precursors were banned, chemists could just use “pre-precursors,” and you can’t ban all of those, since they’re also used to make many legitimate chemicals.

Instead, Biden pressured Xi to punish Chinese companies who sell to the cartels…