Senior White House trade adviser Peter Navarro claimed that Canada has been “taken over by Mexican cartels.”
Navarro, Trump’s senior counselor for trade and manufacturing who was jailed for contempt of Congress last year after refusing to testify about the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, was speaking about U.S. tariffs on our northern neighbor with Fox News’ Bret Baier on Wednesday evening.
Trump has repeatedly suggested that the smuggling of fentanyl over the border led, in part, to the tariffs. On Wednesday, the MAGA chief said he spoke with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and told him that his country’s efforts to combat smuggling are not “good enough.”
ADVERTISEMENT
Navarro then parroted his boss—and even told Baier that the country has been overrun by criminal gangs.
He said: “What I wanna say to every world leader who gets up in arms when all we’re asking for is fairness and to have them stop killing our people is, please, listen to us. Canada could do a lot more.
“Canada has been taken over, Bret, by Mexican cartels. They bring up these pill presses and printers, and the medicines that they fake, you can’t tell the difference.”
Baier then pressed Navarro on what the “threshold” is for the U.S. pulling the tariffs. Navarro laughed and added: “Well, there’s 70,000 Americans dying every year, and that’s the low estimate because you don’t pick up all the deaths from the fake Xanax.”
Baier asked: “True, but you’re putting them all in Canada’s pocket?”
“No, of course not. Of course not, Bret,” replied Navarro, shifting the blame to China. “But what we want to see is Canada and Mexico crack down on China. China, for whatever reason, and there is a lot of speculation as to whether they mean to do us harm with this, they don’t seem to care, OK? So it’s up to Mexico and Canada to help us do this.”
He continued: “And look, here’s the other thing. The fentanyl crisis is so toxic to our economy, Bret, because most of the people that are dying are prime-age working people.”
Contented, Baier moved on. “I think everybody’s on board on the fentanyl threat and the fentanyl deaths,” he concluded.
A 2023 Canadian government report conceded that criminal “street gangs are present in most areas of the country.” Criminal Intelligence Service Canada (CISC) said more than 3,000 organized crime groups were known to be operating in the country. One study in the same year showed that since 2016, more than 30,000 people had died from opioid-related overdoses in Canada.
Canada pours hundreds of millions of dollars into anti-gang and drug programs, including support for law enforcement and prevention initiatives.
