The US imported $463bn worth of goods from China in 2016. Cutting off trade with Beijing would trigger a protectionist spiral leading to a global recession
Donald Trump huddled with his national security advisers on Sunday to try to decide on a response to North Korea’s sixth and most powerful nuclear test.
Pyongyang said it had detonated a hydrogen bomb, using nuclear fusion as well as fission, and the seismic data suggested a blast that was ten times as big as any of its previous tests.
Before meeting his advisors, Trump was asked if he was considering a military response. “We’ ll see, ” he replied.
However, his initial responses on Twitter suggested the key aspect of the US reaction would be a call on China and other trading partners to tighten the economic vice on North Korea .
“The United States is considering, in addition to other options, stopping all trade with any country doing business with North Korea, ” Trump tweeted .
The threat was not seen as credible. In 2016, the US imported $463bn worth of goods from China, North Korea’s biggest trade partner. Cutting off trade with Beijing would trigger a protectionist spiral that would create a global recession.
Steven Mnuchin, the US treasury secretary, said he would begin drafting a new package of sanctions. A previous round had targeted mostly Chinese companies that did business with North Korea. “We’ ve already started with sanctions against North Korea but I am going to draft a sanctions package to send to the president for his strong consideration, ” Mnuchin told Fox News .
However, former officials and analysts said that much would depend on how China now reacted. Beijing had repeatedly warned the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, not to carry out another nuclear test.
Nikki Haley, the US ambassador to the UN, tweeted on Sunday: “We along w/Japan, France, the UK and S. Korea have called for an emergency Security Council meeting on N. Korea in the open tomorrow at 10am.”
Working with China and other Pacific powers is Washington’s best of a dwindling range of options. With the latest test, North Korea is signalling that it has made a technological breakthrough. Hours earlier, Kim had been photographed with what appeared to be a two-stage thermonuclear warhead. The video footage and photographs suggested that the device was designed to be small enough to fit into the nose cone of an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) that Pyongyang tested twice in July, which could potentially reach the US mainland.
“While we don’ t know for absolute certain the device was a thermonuclear warhead, there is little doubt in my mind it was, ” said James Acton, a nuclear weapons expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
