Trump's First Question for Xi: Why China's Fentanyl Pipeline Through Venezuela?

He accused China of using Venezuela as a transit point for fentanyl, evading US and Mexican port controls.

Trump, during a press interaction at the White House, said that the first question he would ask the Chinese leader would be about fentanyl.

"I'm meeting with President Xi... The first question I'm going to be asking him about is fentanyl. They make $100 million selling fentanyl into our country. They lose $100 billion with the 20% tariff. So it's not a good business proposition... It's one of the things we're talking about... They pay a very big penalty for doing that... We'll see what happens at the end of next week... I'm meeting with President Xi, actually, in South Korea...," said Trump.

Trump will meet Chinese President Xi Jinping on October 30 on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Summit in Busan, South Korea.

The Busan meeting comes at a moment of heightened economic and geopolitical strain between the two powers, with Washington preparing to impose 100 per cent tariffs on Chinese imports just days after the summit.

The Busan encounter will be the first in-person meeting between Trump and Xi since 2019, when they last met during the G20 Summit in Japan. This time, however, officials say the stakes are far higher.

Responding to a question about whether China was smuggling fentanyl into the US via Venezuela, Trump said, "They are doing that. But they are paying a 20% tariff right now because of fentanyl. That's billions and billions of dollars. On November 1st, the tariff on China rises to 157%, a record-setting level. It's not sustainable for them."

Trump also said that he will inform Congress of his plans to attack land-based cartel targets in Venezuela as he looks to expand his thus-far seaborne military campaign.

"We're going to go [to Congress]. I don't see any loss in going -- no reason not to," Trump told reporters at a White House event touting a federal crackdown that's arrested roughly 3,200 alleged drug cartel members over the past month.

"You know they will always complain, 'Oh, we should have gone.' So we're going to definitely," Trump said.

The president turned to Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, seated to his right, and told him, "I'd like just to tell you, 'Let's go.' We'll go. We're going to tell them what we're going to do, and I think they're going to probably like it, except for the radical left lunatics."

Trump has threatened land-based strikes for weeks after the administration on Sept. 2 began targeting vessels smuggling drugs off the Caribbean coast of Venezuela.

"I don't think we're going to necessarily ask for a declaration of war. I think we're just going to kill people who are bringing drugs into our country. Okay? We're going to kill them, you know, they're going to be like dead, okay?" Trump said.

Trump said that his campaign against drug cartels, coupled with his summit meeting next Thursday with Chinese President Xi Jinping, would accelerate the decline of overdose deaths in the US, which peaked under former President Joe Biden.

Trump told reporters that fentanyl, which has killed nearly 330,000 Americans over the past five years, according to federal data, is now being routed by Chinese manufacturers through Venezuela to bypass tightened US and Mexican port controls.

- ANI