From New York Times, I'm Michael Bobarro.

This is the Daily.

For years, even as fentanyl killed Americans at an astonishing rate, Mexico has claimed that it was doing everything it could to crack down on its production.

This week, President Trump began using punishing new tariffs to test that claim.

Today, my colleague, Mexico City Bureau Chief Natalie Kittrowev, on the surprising result of Trump's strategy.

It's Thursday, March 6th.

It's weird being on the mic as a guest, but here we are.

Um, I don't know how to address you. It's so weird. I know. I was kind of wondering how you were going to handle that.

How about we just do it normal, like? Okay. Yeah.

Hey, Natalie. Hi, yeah. Hey, Natalie.

Hi, Michael.

Natalie, tell us the story, the kind of improbable story, of how you ended up inside an illegal fentanyl lab in Mexico.

So I'm the bureau chief here in Mexico City, and for a really long time now, I've been obsessed

with the fentanyl problem. Obviously, we know that in the United States, fentanyl has just

been a scourge for years. It is killing tens of thousands of Americans every year, and much of the fentanyl that ends up on the street is made

in Mexico. Mexico is a huge producer of fentanyl, not just in the U.S., but worldwide. And so I wanted

to get into that manufacturing operation. This is a synthetic opioid. It's not grown in fields like heroin,

you know, cocaine. These are natural drugs. Fentanyl is made from chemicals in labs. And to understand

how these little pills end up in the hands of Americans every single day, I found it extremely

important to see with my own eyes exactly how it's made

step by step. Right. But of course, the challenge is getting inside, I assume the kind of places in

Mexico that make fentanyl don't offer tours. So how did you even begin to try to get in one?

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