Donald Trump Thinks He Can End The Fentanyl Problem By… Hitting Drug Smugglers With Tariffs

What a surprise. The man who clearly doesn’t understand tariffs doesn’t understand drug trafficking. President Trump has repeatedly claimed the flow of illicit Fentanyl into the United States justifies hitting countries like Mexico, China, and Canada(???) with super-high tariffs, under the weird assumption that starting a trade war is the best move to make in a drug war.

Of the many things Trump doesn’t understand (or doesn’t care to understand) about tariffs, this latest bit of Truth Social activity (at nearly 1:00 am on a school night) makes it clear Trump also doesn’t understand how drug trafficking works. His April 1st post on his own social media service contains the expected free-form, randomly-capitalized, stream-of-unconsciousness we’ve come to expect from Trump social media missives.

But the most inadvertently hilarious part of this tirade is the assumption that tariffs can somehow make it unprofitable for people to illegally export products.

Here’s a screenshot of Trump’s original post:

If you can’t read this or see the embed, consider yourself somewhat lucky. But since we’re discussing the content of this post, here’s what it says:

Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, and Rand Paul, also of Kentucky, will hopefully get on the Republican bandwagon, for a change, and fight the Democrats wild and flagrant push to not penalize Canada for the sale, into our Country, of large amounts of Fentanyl, by Tariffing the value of this horrible and deadly drug in order to make it more costly to distribute and buy. They are playing with the lives of the American people, and right into the hands of the Radical Left Democrats and Drug Cartels. The Senate Bill is just a ploy of the Dems to show and expose the weakness of certain Republicans, namely these four, in that it is not going anywhere because the House will never approve it and I, as your President, will never sign it. Why are they allowing Fentanyl to pour into our Country unchecked, and without penalty. What is wrong with them, other than suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome, commonly known as TDS? Who can want this to happen to our beautiful families, and why? To the people of the Great States of Kentucky, Alaska, and Maine, please contact these Senators and get them to FINALLY adhere to Republican Values and Ideals. They have been extremely difficult to deal with and, unbelievably disloyal to hardworking Majority Leader John Thune, and the Republican Party itself. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!

That’s what the man said on main: we have to slap tariffs on illegal imports of illicit drugs. Somehow, the Democratic party is failing the Make America Great Again version of America by refusing to slap tariffs on a product that is being smuggled into the country far more frequently than it’s being declared at border crossings.

Canada isn’t even the problem, even if we agree with half of this non-logic. No one honestly considers Canada to be part of the mostly imagined “border crisis.” And, even if we give Trump far more credit than he deserves, this statement makes it clear Trump actually believes he can curb illegal drug trafficking by making it far more expensive to move fentanyl legally across the US/Canada border. All this does is increase the market for illegal, unregulated fentanyl because acquiring it legally will no longer be the less expensive and/or easier option.

And for all the talk about fentanyl being “terrible and deadly,” there are actual legitimate medical uses for the synthetic opioid. Patients who could be helped by this drug will be forced to use other, less effective options or, in worst case scenarios, be priced out of the market entirely.

The worst part of all of this is that it’s merely performative. Trump doesn’t actually care about fighting fentanyl trafficking or limiting abuse of the drug. He just wants to keep throwing tariffs at Canada because pretty much every politician in the country has told Trump to fuck right off with his “51st state” bullshit. And he’s literally stupid enough to believe that slapping tariffs on legal drugs will limit the flow of illicit drugs into the US. And no one will be able to convince him otherwise — not only because no one in his party will even make the attempt, but because he’s so self-deluded it’s literally impossible to change his mind.