Beijing ratchets up trade pressure on Pyongyang

BEIJING — China moved to tighten economic pressure on North Korea on Monday by implementing a new package of U.N. sanctions but simultaneously had a warning for the Trump administration: Don’t spoil our newfound unity by starting a trade war.

The Commerce Ministry announced a ban on imports of iron ore, iron, lead and coal from North Korea effective Tuesday — although China will continue to clear goods that have already arrived in port until Sept. 5.

But at the same time, Beijing warned President Trump not to split the international coalition over North Korea by provoking a trade war between China and the United States.

Trump signed an executive memorandum Monday afternoon instructing his top trade negotiator to open an investigation into Chinese intellectual property violations, a move that could eventually result in severe trade penalties.

In China, these proposed measures were seen as an attempt to pressure Beijing to act more strongly against North Korea and, at the same time, as an effort to shift the blame for the world’s failure to rein in Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile programs onto China alone.

“It is obviously improper to use one thing as a tool to impose pressure on another thing,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told a news conference Monday.

With the commercial relationship between the two countries becoming more intertwined by the day, a trade war is not a good idea, she said. “There will be no winner,” she said. “It will be lose-lose.”

In an editorial, the state-owned China Daily newspaper said Trump was asking too much of China over North Korea

“By trying to incriminate Beijing as an accomplice in (North Korea’s) nuclear adventure and blame it for a failure that is essentially a failure of all stakeholders, Trump risks making the serious mistake of splitting up the international coalition that is the means to resolve the issue peacefully,” the paper wrote.