Trump issued the warning in a series of tweets Wednesday, which he described as a White House statement, after complaining that China was hindering the negotiations due to trade disputes with the US.
Earlier Wednesday, Trump told reporters at the White House negotiations with North Korea are “doing well,” but “China makes it much more difficult.”
The White House statement asserted that China is providing Pyongyang with “considerable aid, including money, fuel, fertilizer and various other commodities.”
The comments come just days after Trump called off a trip to North Korea by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, saying there hadn’t been enough progress in talks aimed at denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula. In a series of tweets Friday, Trump said Pompeo would likely return to North Korea after US trade disputes with China were resolved.
The US has leaned heavily on China, which shares a border with North Korea and is its largest trading partner, to help enforce tougher sanctions imposed last year against Kim Jong Un’s regime. China “is the route to North Korea,” Trump said Wednesday.
The trade war between the US and China is primed to escalate further after their governments failed to make progress in two days of talks last week. The two sides had met with low expectations for the meetings and no further talks had been scheduled, a person familiar with the discussions said.
In the past week, while the two sides were talking, the US slapped tariffs on a further US$16 billion in Chinese imports. Retaliation by Beijing would bring the amount of trade affected by the dispute to US$100 billion, with more to come. Looming now are new tariffs that Trump has threatened to impose on some US$200 billion in annual imports from China, and Beijing’s already-promised retaliation.
“I don’t like to call it a trade war,” Trump said Wednesday.
In the months since Trump and Kim met in Singapore, the US has struggled to show signs of progress in its bid to get North Korea to dismantle its nuclear weapons program. Pompeo conceded before the Senate recently that the Kim government continues producing fissile material and has provided no inventory of its nuclear program and facilities.
In a diplomatic gesture to Pyongyang in June, Trump suspended what he called “war games” with South Korea, saying he believed Kim “wants to get it done” on denuclearization. Defence Secretary Jim Mattis on Tuesday said the US doesn’t plan to suspend more joint military drills amid reports that North Korea was rejecting American demands to give up nuclear warheads.
“The president believes that his relationship with Kim Jong Un is a very good and warm one, and there is no reason at this time to be spending large amounts of money on joint US-South Korea war games,” the White House said in the statement on Wednesday. “Besides, the president can instantly start the joint exercises again with South Korea, and Japan, if he so chooses. If he does, they will be far bigger than ever before.”
The US has conducted military exercises on the Korean Peninsula since the mid-1950s and holds a handful of joint operations with South Korea every year, which the Pentagon calls a means of ensuring the two forces are able to work together in the event of an attack. The annual drills, separate from regular training programs, have long angered North Korea’s leaders.