Retiring President Biden told reporters Thursday that he disapproves of President-elect Donald Trump’s “counterproductive” threat to slap tariffs on Canada and Mexico if they don’t take action to stop the flow of fentanyl and illegal immigration across the US border.
“I hope he rethinks it. I think it’s a counterproductive thing to do,” Biden, 82, said while paying a Thanksgiving visit to a fire station on Nantucket, where he’s vacationing at billionaire David Rubenstein’s home.
“We’re surrounded by the Pacific Ocean, the Atlantic Ocean and two allies, Mexico and Canada. The last thing we need to do is begin to screw up those relationships.”
Biden also said that he hopes the presidential transition goes “smoothly” and mused that “all the talk about what [Trump] may do or not do — I think there may be an internal reckoning on his part.”
Trump, 78, issued his threat of a 25% tariff on all Canadian and Mexican imports Monday — while issuing a similar 10% tariff threat against China, which is the primary source of the potent synthetic opioid.
The threat was widely understood by Trump’s allies to be a bargaining tactic — and he said Wednesday that Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum phoned him to pledge to work together on the issues.
Sheinbaum “agreed to stop Migration through Mexico, and into the United States, effectively closing our Southern Border. We also talked about what can be done to stop the massive drug inflow into the United States, and also, U.S. consumption of these drugs. It was a very productive conversation!” Trump wrote on social media.
Fentanyl killed more than 223,000 Americans during Biden’s first three years in office as the compound was increasingly cut into non-opioid drugs like cocaine and counterfeit prescriptions, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates.
The staggering toll amounts to nearly one in every thousand Americans dying from fentanyl in Biden’s four-year term, with the victims being disproportionately young adults.
Republican politicians hammered Biden early in his term for not doing more to halt the flow of the lethal drug, which generally is made in China and then smuggled into the US through Mexico.
Fentanyl deaths are down slightly this year after Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed during a summit with Biden to restrict the illicit trade, but fatalities remain sharply elevated after creeping higher during the end of Trump’s first term.
Illegal immigration is also down over the past year after unlawful crossings hit an all-time high last December — with credit being given to Biden’s June executive action to shut down asylum processing if crossings exceed a certain threshold.
Biden made that pivot while he sought re-election as polling indicated that immigration was a major liability, before he was forced to relinquish the Democratic nomination in July amid a mutiny by allies over his perceived cognitive decline.
Republicans accuse the Biden administration of cooking the books on immigration by allowing many asylum seekers to enter the US through legal points of entry after registering using the CBP One app.
The US-Mexico border crisis exploded during Biden’s first year in office as he halted construction of Trump’s southern border wall and terminated his “Remain in Mexico” policy that required most asylum seekers to await decisions on their claims of persecution while residing in Mexico.