WASHINGTON (Reuters) -China agreed on a plan to stop fentanyl-related chemicals as part of its deal with the Trump administration to crack down on the lethal opioid, FBI Director Kash Patel said on Wednesday.
Patel said the agreement resulted from his trip to Beijing last week, a visit that followed U.S. President Donald Trump’s summit last month with Chinese President Xi Jinping in South Korea.
“The People’s Republic of China has fully designated and listed all 13 precursors utilized to make fentanyl,” Patel said at a news briefing. “Furthermore, they have agreed to control seven chemical subsidiaries that are also utilized to produce this lethal drug.”
He did not provide additional details. The Chinese embassy in Washington did not respond to a request for comment.
Reuters previously reported Patel’s trip to China, which took place last weekend. The trip was not previously officially announced by either the United States or China.
China’s Commerce Ministry announced on Monday that the country will make adjustments to the catalog of drug-related precursor chemicals and will require licenses for export of certain chemicals to the United States, Canada and Mexico.
The anti-drug authority also tightened oversight of production and export of drug-making chemicals not on its control list to keep them out of illegal channels, it said in a notice.
It underscored criminal risks exporters could face when shipping chemicals to certain “high-risk” countries such as the United States.
Trump halved the tariffs on Chinese goods imposed as a punishment over the flow of fentanyl to 10% after reaching the agreement during last month’s talks with Chinese leader Xi Jinping.
Xi will work “very hard to stop the flow” of fentanyl, a deadly synthetic opioid that is the leading cause of American overdose deaths, Trump told reporters after the talks.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the details of the fresh consensus would be hashed out through a new bilateral working group.
The deal signaled a shift for Trump officials, who had insisted that punitive measures would remain in place until China proved it was cracking down on fentanyl supply chains.
Chinese officials vehemently defend their record on fentanyl, saying they have already taken extensive action to regulate precursor chemicals used to make the drug and accuse Washington of using the issue as “blackmail.”
(Reporting By Gram Slattery, Steve Holland and Trevor Hunnicutt;Editing by Nick Zieminski)
