Lethal trade.

"China's sputtering economy has its worried leaders" "unveiled stimulus measures, offered rare cash handouts, held a surprise meeting to kickstart growth and tried to shake up an ailing property market with a raft of decisions - they did all of this in the last week." Two surveys show what people think. "The first ...found that people were growing pessimistic and disillusioned about their prospects. The second, is a record of protests, both physical and online, that noted a rise in incidents driven by economic grievances." BBC. Some people take drugs when depressed. But the Chinese sell fentanyl to kill Americans. According to US law, "Individual parcels of clothing, gadgets and other merchandise valued at up to $800 - one of the highest such limits in the world - now enter the country duty free and with minimal paperwork and inspections." One billion such parcels entered the US in 2023, 1.4 billion will do so in fiscal 2024 and narcos are smuggling fentanyl precursors from China in such packages. Just one courier "ferried about 7,000 kilos of fentanyl-making chemicals to an operative of the Sinaloa Cartel. That's 15,432 pounds sufficient to produce 5.3 billion pills - enough to kill every living soul in the United States several times over." Reuters. "Chinese chemical suppliers catering to the illicit drug trade conceal fentanyl-making ingredients known as precursors in small boxes that look like regular e-commerce packages. The idea is to hide these boxes in plain sight, making them disappear into the massive flow of cheap goods shipped legally from China to the US every day." Reuters. In China, "Public spaces are blanketed with CCTV cameras that record details like clothing, gender, age, and even ethnicity. Many of these cameras are powered by facial recognition technology to identify people on police blacklists, citizens' movements are monitored, dissidents are easily tracked and protests and strikes are stuffed out before they can gain momentum. qz.com. It's impossible, therefore, that the authorities are unaware of those smuggling fentanyl precursors into the US. The US cannot stop trade with China because "US consumers have benefited from lower prices," so that "increased trade with China boosted the annual purchasing power of the average US household by $1,500 between 2000 and 2007." President Donald Trump imposed billions of dollars of tariffs on Chinese goods while President Joe Biden has added to them by banning TikTok and imposing export controls on advanced technology to China. cfr.org. To evade US restrictions Chinese companies have moved production to Mexico which has a free trade agreement with the US. "Mexico surpassed China as the top exporter to the US in 2023." However, "The increase in Mexican exports to the US has been 'roughly matched by simultaneous and closely correlated growth in Mexican imports from China,' according to S&P Market Intelligence country risk analysts Jose Enrique Sevilla-Macip and John Raines. The US is imposing tariffs on goods from China. China is exporting fentanyl free of tariffs. Kill Americans and make money.