In February, the State Department branded Mexico’s Sinaloa and Jalisco drug cartels, as well as several other Latin American gangs, as "terrorist organizations" akin to ISIS or al-Qaeda. This comes after years of Republican lawmakers banging the drums of war against the narcos south of the border, even describing illicit fentanyl, an opioid used daily in hospitals for surgery, as a "chemical weapon."
The declaration was shortly followed by the opening shots of a trade war with Mexico, Canada and China with the Trump administration imposing tariffs on goods imported from those countries unless they take drastic action to stop narcotrafficking.
