A Fox Business graphic showing Trade War partially crossed out and replaced with Drug War

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Fox parrots Trump's “drug war” justification for Canada/Mexico tariffs, even as he weakened fentanyl smuggling enforcement

Trump repeatedly gave economic rationales for the tariffs, which will hurt the US economy

Written by Zachary Pleat

Published

Part of President Donald Trump’s justification for imposing a 25% tariff on all imports from Canada and Mexico, which went into effect on March 4 (with a one-month delay for the auto industry announced on March 5), was the two countries’ supposedly lax enforcement of drug interdiction at the border, which Trump claimed was fueling the fentanyl crisis in the United States. The Trump administration, with a major assist from its propagandist allies at Fox News, attempted to rebrand the unnecessary trade war against America’s neighbors as a necessary step in a “drug war” against fentanyl while the administration spread misinformation about the crisis.

Trump accepted largely exaggerated concessions from Canada and Mexico to delay the implementation of tariffs for the past month, and repeatedly offered economic rationales to justify tariffs that economists say will hurt the U.S. economy. Trump’s administration also initiated policies that actually harm drug enforcement actions in the U.S., and Trump’s first administration failed to properly address the fentanyl crisis.

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  • The Trump administration has insisted tariffs on Canada and Mexico are part of a “drug war,” not a trade war

    • Trump’s executive order cited “the sustained influx of illicit opioids and other drugs” to impose tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. [The White House, 2/1/25]
    • On March 5, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said on Bloomberg Surveillance: “Remember, this is not a trade war. This is a drug war. We’ve got fentanyl still pouring into the country, and it’s got to stop.” Lutnick then said that even if Canada and Mexico “stop the flow of fentanyl … there are going to be tariffs.” [Bloomberg, 3/5/25]
    • On March 2, Lutnick said that Trump was “crystal clear on … two points” — that Canada and Mexico had to restrict border crossings and fentanyl smuggling to avoid tariffs. [Fox Business, Sunday Morning Futures, 3/2/25]
    • On February 27, Trump posted that the tariffs on Canadian and Mexican imports would begin on March 4, again citing the need to stop fentanyl from entering the U.S. [Truth Social, 2/27/25]
    • On February 3, National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett said on CNBC: “This is 100% about a drug war. It's 100% about fentanyl.” Hassett continued to insist that Trump’s tariffs against Canada and Mexico are about stopping fentanyl from being smuggled into the U.S., even dismissing Customs and Border Protection figures showing that only about 43 pounds of fentanyl were seized at the northern border. [CNBC, Squawk Box, 2/3/25; CNN, 2/3/25]
    • Trump trade adviser Peter Navarro also claimed on Fox that “we’re in a drug war.” He added that the Canadian prime minister has to recognize “it’s a drug war, not a trade war.” [Fox News, America Reports, 2/3/25]

  • Fox echoed this framing to justify Trump’s tariffs

    • After the tariffs took effect, Fox & Friends co-host Steve Doocy said: “Remember, it was all predicated on the amount of fentanyl coming into the country, the number of people coming into the country illegally.” Doocy added: “If that stops on both our north and southern border, you’d think, perhaps, that he could pull the plug on them.” [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 3/4/25]
    • The day before the tariffs were scheduled to take effect, Fox Business anchor Maria Bartiromo continued to push the Trump line that the tariffs are “all due to the failures to stop the flow of fentanyl into the country.” [Fox Business, Mornings with Maria Bartiromo, 3/3/25]
    • Bartiromo: “Mexico, Canada, and China await Trump's promised tariffs this upcoming Tuesday for their failure to end the flow of deadly fentanyl into America.” [Fox Business, Sunday Morning Futures, 3/2/25]
    • Fox contributor Lisa Boothe on the tariffs: Trump “is trying to save Americans from the fentanyl crisis … they’re smuggled across the northern and southern border in Mexico and Canada.” Boothe added: “That’s what these tariffs are about. He’s just trying to save American lives.” [Fox News, The Big Weekend Show, 3/2/25]
    • Bartiromo insisted “it’s a drug war, it’s not a trade war,” before asking a Canadian minister to address trade deficits and “reciprocity when it comes to trade.” [Fox Business, Mornings with Maria Bartiromo, 2/5/25]
    • Fox Business host Dagen McDowell: “Call it what it is: Democrats, tariffs aren’t about starting a trade war, they’re about ending a drug war.” [Fox Business, The Bottom Line, 2/4/25]
    • Fox senior White House correspondent Peter Doocy: “It’s a border thing, really. … They did not want it to come across like a trade war because the fentanyl is such a big component of it.” [Fox Business, Kudlow, 2/4/25]
    • Bartiromo on February 3: “This is not a trade war. This is a drug war.” She continued: “There are specific reasons that President Trump is instituting these tariffs. He wants the drugs flowing into America to stop. He wants the illegal migrants coming from some of these countries to stop. This is a drug war. This is not a trade war.” Fox News contributor Liz Peek agreed, saying: “I do think this is a very reasonable thing to do.” [Fox Business, Mornings with Maria Bartiromo, 2/3/25]
    • Fox Business correspondent Lydia Hu: “I think it's also important to remind everyone why President Trump is doing this. This is about the flow of illegal migration and drugs.” On Fox & Friends, Hu said that Trump “wants zero deaths from fentanyl” as his reasoning for instituting tariffs on Canada and Mexico, but notably aired a clip of the president saying that “the United States has been ripped off by virtually every country in the world. We have deficits with almost every country. Not every country, but almost. And we're going to change it.” Co-host Brian Kilmeade added: “The emergency is fentanyl, and it’s real.” [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 2/3/25]
    • Fox chief political analyst Brit Hume: “The president told everybody, and his aides said … these tariffs are not about a trade war, they’re about a drug war. Most people, I think, didn’t believe him.” Hume added, “A pause in the imposition of the tariffs in exchange for measures to affect security along the border, it seems to me, establishes that that, at least for now, is what that was all about.” [Fox News, Special Report, 2/3/25]
    • McDowell: “Take your pick: Guacamole, or stopping the deadly flow of fentanyl from crossing our border.” Fox Business’ The Bottom Line then aired a clip of Navarro saying the tariff threats are part of “a drug war, not a trade war.” [Fox Business, The Bottom Line, 2/3/25]
    • FoxNews.com: “‘This is about fentanyl’: Tariffs are crucial to combating ‘drug war,’ Trump and Cabinet officials say.” [FoxNews.com, 2/3/25]

  • Trump has taken actions to weaken the interdiction of drugs coming into America since his second administration began

    • The Trump administration’s focus on mass deportation has taken federal agents away from stopping fentanyl smuggling. In an interview with The New Republic’s Greg Sargent, former senior Immigration and Customs Enforcement official Deborah Fleischaker explained that “all of these other federal law enforcement agencies have now been given immigration enforcement powers and are being told to do immigration enforcement.” She mentioned that ICE Homeland Security Investigations personnel are being taken away from “fentanyl work,” and noted that this also applies to “DEA and ATF and FBI” agents: “All of those functions are going to be impacted because they’re working on immigration enforcement as opposed to their core functions.” [The New Republic, 1/28/25]
    • The Trump administration redirected prosecutors with the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force to “provide focused resources and attention to immigration-related prosecutions.” According to a Department of Justice memo posted by American Immigration Council senior fellow Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, the administration further directed assistant U.S. attorneys attached to these drug enforcement task forces “to devote significant time and attention to the investigation and prosecution of” immigration-related crimes instead of drug-related crimes. Reichlin-Melnick commented that “Trump is literally letting fentanyl traffickers off the hook.” [Twitter/X, 2/2/25]
    • USA Today: “The Department of Homeland Security has ordered its entire investigations division - composed of 6,000 agents - to divert focus on drug dealers, terrorists, and human traffickers and shift priority to the Trump administration’s mission of deporting people in the U.S. illegally.” Current and former Homeland Security Investigations officials told USA Today that the move “will undermine high-profile investigations into some of the most dangerous transnational threats Americans face, including Mexican drug cartels smuggling deadly fentanyl across the border from Mexico.” [USA Today, 2/14/25]
    • According to Reuters, Trump’s freeze on foreign aid “temporarily stopped U.S.-funded anti-narcotics programs in Mexico that for years have been working to curb the flow” of fentanyl into the U.S. This freeze halted all of the State Department’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement programs in Mexico, which “include training Mexican authorities to find and destroy clandestine fentanyl labs and to stop precursor chemicals needed to manufacture the illicit drug from entering Mexico.” Former State Department official Dafna H. Rand told Reuters: “By pausing this assistance, the United States undercuts its own ability to manage a crisis affecting millions of Americans.” [Reuters, 2/13/25]
    • Reuters: Trump’s foreign aid freeze also stalled a U.N. program to stop Mexican cartels from obtaining fentanyl chemicals through Mexican ports. Reuters reported that “the initiative provided Mexico’s Navy with training and equipment to improve screening of cargo entering and exiting the Port of Manzanillo, the nation’s busiest container port. Two additional Mexican seaports — Lázaro Cárdenas and Veracruz — were to be added this month, a rollout that’s now on hold due to the funding cutoff.” Reuters added: “The U.S. funding freeze has also shelved, for now, future training and equipment donations at Manzanillo, four of the sources said. The port was slated to receive additional cargo scanners and drug-testing equipment, two sources said.” [Reuters, 2/24/25]

  • Trump has repeatedly offered other rationales for instituting tariffs on Canada and Mexico

    • When asked what Canada could do to stave off tariffs, Trump responded: “What I’d like to see— Canada become our 51st state.” He elaborated: “As a state, it’s different. As a state it’s much different. And there are no tariffs.” [The Hill, 2/3/25]
    • Trump also told reporters that Canada and Mexico would have to “balance out their trade, No. 1,” to avoid tariffs. Trump said: “They have to balance out their trade, No. 1. They’ve got to stop people from pouring into our country, and we’ve stopped it. They haven’t stopped it. We’ve stopped it. … They have to stop people pouring in, and we have to stop fentanyl.” Trump continued emphasizing trade balances over fentanyl, adding: “We put tariffs on. They owe us a lot of money, and I’m sure they’re going to pay.” He also said: “It’s been a one-way street. We subsidize Canada to the tune of about $200 billion a year. And for what? What do we get out of it? We don’t get anything out of it.” [The Hill, 2/2/25]
    • NPR: Trump “keeps neglecting” his stated rationale for tariffs, “giving others instead” like complaining about trade deficits with Canada. NPR cited a Truth Social post from February 2 in which Trump wrote: “We pay hundreds of Billions of Dollars to SUBSIDIZE Canada. Why? There is no reason. We don't need anything they have. … Therefore, Canada should become our Cherished 51st State.” [NPR, 2/3/25]
    • In remarks before his first Cabinet meeting, Trump complained about a trade deficit and military cooperation with Canada even after acknowledging a “90 percent drop in border crossings.” [The White House, 2/26/25]
    • During Trump’s last announcement confirming the tariffs, he said that for Canada and Mexico to avoid tariffs, “what they have to do is build their car plants, frankly, and other things in the United States, in which case they have no tariffs.” CNN further reported that Trump said “he was using tariffs to ‘punish’ countries that, as he put it, were taking from the US economy without giving enough in return.” [CNN, 3/3/25]

  • Canada is not a major fentanyl conduit, and fentanyl is largely smuggled in by U.S. citizens across the southern border

    • U.S. government data show that nearly all fentanyl seizures occur at official ports of entry, and almost none involve undocumented immigrants. A September 2022 fact check from Immigration Impact explained how criminal drug networks are smuggling in fentanyl: “When it comes to getting their products into the United States, one thing is clear: it’s not migrants bringing it across in backpacks, it’s mostly U.S. citizens and truckers smuggling it into the country through legal ports of entry.” Immigration Impact added: “In 2018, 77% of all people sentenced on federal drug trafficking crimes were U.S. citizens.” [Immigration Impact, 9/7/22]
    • Cato Institute: “US Citizens Were 80 Percent of Crossers with Fentanyl at Ports of Entry from 2019 to 2024.” The Cato Institute, citing data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection, explained: “The data are most relevant to understanding fentanyl seizure activity because the vast majority of fentanyl is seized at ports of entry, not between the ports where people cross illegally.” It continued: “From FY 2015 to 2024, 88 percent of all fentanyl was seized at ports of entry, basically the same as in FY 2024. Another 4 percent was seized at vehicle checkpoints on highways after the ports. Only 8 percent was seized by Border Patrol on patrol, and many of those seizures came from vehicle stops as well.” [Cato Institute, 8/8/24]
    • Aaron Reichlin-Melnick: “To emphasize once again: the vast majority of fentanyl traffickers are US citizens, who get less scrutiny when reentering the country at ports of entry.” He added: “Here's the Sentencing Commission noting that in FY 2023, 86.4% of people sentenced for fentanyl trafficking were US citizens.” [Twitter/X, 2/3/25]
    • Canada was the source of a miniscule 0.2% of fentanyl seizures at U.S. borders in 2024. A CNN fact check reported that “federal statistics show US border authorities seized 21,889 pounds of fentanyl in the 2024 fiscal year. Of that amount, 43 pounds were seized at the Canadian border — about 0.2% — compared with 21,148 pounds at the Mexican border, about 96.6%.” The fact check further explained that “just 2 pounds were seized” at the Canadian border the previous year, and 14 pounds the year before that. [CNN, 2/3/25]
    • A 2022 report from a Congressional commission on drug trafficking stated that “Canada is not known to be a major source of fentanyl, other synthetic opioids or precursor chemicals to the United States.” [The New York Times, 1/30/25]

  • Trump and his administration “misstate[d] key facts” about the improving fentanyl crisis, and his first administration failed to adequately address it

    • NPR: Trump and his administration “misstate[d] key facts about the fentanyl crisis” to justify the tariffs from the start. NPR reported that on Inauguration Day, Trump claimed drug cartels are “killing 250,000 [or] 300,000 American people per year,” and on January 31, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt “said tariffs are warranted because fentanyl has ‘killed tens of millions of Americans.’” NPR explained: “These claims are false. While the overdose epidemic is a serious crisis, experts in law enforcement, drug policy research and public health agree street drugs have killed vastly fewer people.” [NPR, 2/2/25]
    • NPR: “Fatal overdoses from fentanyl and all other street drugs have plummeted nationally by more than 21% since June 2023, according to the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, falling below 90,000 deaths in a 12-month period for the first time in roughly half a decade.” [NPR, 2/2/25]
    • The Washington Post: The first Trump administration was “not dedicating nearly enough federal resources” to combat the fentanyl crisis. John P. Walters, drug czar under former President George W. Bush, explained: “What other threat that is preventable is going to kill tens of thousands of Americans? We’re spending much more money on terrorism, as we should, but we’re not spending a similar amount on the source of death to many more Americans right now.” The Post also reported that “health policy experts say drug treatment funding is not nearly enough, and the administration’s response was hobbled by the failure to appoint a drug czar in its chaotic first year and confusion over who was in charge of drug policy.” By May 2019, the administration had “yet to produce a comprehensive strategy that is legally required by Congress.” The Post further reported that had Trump’s repeal of the Affordable Care Act succeeded, “more than 500,000 people addicted to opioids could lose their drug treatment coverage.” [The Washington Post, 5/22/19]
    • NPR: The first Trump administration made “serious missteps behind the scenes that hampered federal efforts” to combat fentanyl deaths. NPR said this included “the decision to sideline and defund the Office of National Drug Control Policy.” Trump also “handed leadership of the opioid response to a series of political appointees, including former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and White House adviser Kellyanne Conway” rather than experts. In December 2019, NPR reported, “The Government Accountability Office issued a report blasting the administration for failing to come up with a coherent national opioid strategy as required by law.” [NPR, 10/29/20]

  • Trump’s tariffs targeting Canada and Mexico will weaken the U.S. economy

    • The Tax Foundation estimated that Trump’s tariffs on Canada and Mexico would lead to 223,000 lost jobs, reduce GDP by 0.2%, and “reduce after-tax incomes by an average of 0.6 percent.” The Tax Foundation added that these figures do not account for retaliation from Canada and Mexico. [Tax Foundation, 3/4/25]
    • Yale’s Budget Lab analysis, including the recently announced extra tariffs on China, found that Trump’s policy would raise prices by “1.0-1.2%, the equivalent of an average per household consumer loss of $1,600–2,000 in 2024$.” The analysis also found that “real GDP growth is 0.6 lower in 2025. In the long-run, the US economy is persistently 0.3-0.4% smaller, the equivalent of $80-110 billion annually in 2024$.” [The Budget Lab, 3/3/25]
    • GasBuddy’s head of petroleum analysis Patrick De Haan: Fuel prices will increase by 20-40 cents per gallon in the Northeast “in the next week or two.” In late January, De Haan also said: “There could also be an economic slowdown if these tariffs are implemented. … It could send our economy into a recession simply because it's a massive increase in cost that consumers would essentially pay.” [Twitter/X, 3/3/25; Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 1/31/25]
    • A Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta analysis found that Trump’s tariffs targeting Canada, China, Mexico, plus a 10% universal tariff could raise consumer prices by “0.81 percent to 1.63 percent,” with the tariffs on Canada and Mexico making up “approximately 45 percent of the total price effect.” [Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, February 2025]
    • The Brookings Institution: The 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico alone “would reduce U.S. GDP growth by around 0.25 percentage points, and with retaliation, U.S. GDP growth falls over 0.3 percentage points.” These figures all assume a medium-term effect of 3-5 years, totalling $45 billion in lost economic output, or $75 billion if they retaliate. Brookings also estimated that depending on retaliation, the tariffs would cost between 177,000 - 400,000 jobs, lower U.S. wages by 0.2% - 0.5%, and increase inflation by 0.8 - 1.3 percentage points. [Brookings Institution, 2/3/25]
    • Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz: The higher inflation rate from Trump’s tariffs means “central banks will raise interest rates,” possibly “leading to the worst of possible outcomes – interest rates going up with stagflation, interest rates going up in the face of a weak economy.” [The Guardian, 1/31/25]
    • Moody’s Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi: Trump’s tariffs “will result in higher prices for the things that we import. … It will add to inflationary pressures.” [CNN, 1/31/25]
    • Nomura chief economist for developed markets David Seif: Because of Trump’s tariffs, “there is likely to be higher inflation this year than there otherwise would be, and that might limit the Federal Reserve to a single rate cut this year.” [The Guardian, 1/31/25]
    • The Cato Institute explained that because of the integration of Canada and Mexico in the U.S. car market, the tariffs “will harm US automotive operations and workers, as well as American car consumers.” [Cato Institute, 1/29/25]
    • The Peterson Institute for International Economics estimated that the recently announced tariffs on Canada and Mexico alone would raise inflation by almost half a percentage point in 2025 and cost the U.S. about $200 billion in lost economic growth during Trump’s term. The study warned that “these figures likely underestimate the real damage to the three economies, which are highly integrated.” [Peterson Institute for International Economics, 1/17/25]