Is Trump’s Trade War Really a War on Drugs?
The US may find lessons in how China dealt with its century-long opium scourge.
The remains of the Old Summer Palace destroyed by British and French forces in the Second Opium War in 1860.
Photographer: Hulton Archive/Hulton ArchiveIn Manhattan’s Chinatown, where the Bowery meets East Broadway and Mott Street, there are two statues of historic Chinese personages. They’re one block apart, but separated by close to 2,400 years. Confucius, who lived in the 6th century BC, is the more famous of the two, but just to his south on Chatham Square is Lin Zexu, who died just 175 years ago. On Lin’s pedestal are the words “pioneer in the war against drugs” in both English and Chinese. That makes him more relevant than Confucius in the America of Donald Trump.
In 1839, Lin was the Qing dynasty official who confronted the British and their illegal opium trade that pushed the substance on Chinese users; he confiscated 20,000 chests of the drug and cast the shipments into the sea. In 21st century money, that single cache would approach half a billion dollars. A war against drugs — specifically the synthetic opioid fentanyl — ostensibly underlies Trump’s on-then-off tariffs against Canada and Mexico, on one hand, and the 10% duties newly imposed on China, on the other.