The president’s comments, which came in tweets early on Tuesday, highlight his deepening frustration at China’s inaction on North Korea.
Trump declared on Twitter around 8 a.m.:
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But despite its own deepening frustration with Kim, China has so far been unwilling to tighten the vise on him.
President Xi Jinping of China did not offer Trump any public commitments when they met last week in Palm Beach, Fla. Even in private conversations, officials said, the Chinese leader was circumspect.
Though U. S. officials said the two leaders got along, the meeting was overshadowed by Trump’s missile strike on a Syrian airfield, which U. S. officials hoped would send a message of resolve about the president’s readiness to use military force to defend U. S. interests, in this case to deter the use of chemical weapons.
Trump followed that up by ordering a Navy carrier strike group into the waters off the Korean Peninsula — a show of force that previous presidents have used but that fanned fears in the region that the United States would consider a pre-emptive military strike on North Korea.
Still, Trump’s explicit linkage of North Korea and trade suggested that the president was more likely to seek a bargain with China than to proceed unilaterally.
