Trump to tour Asia, seek help against North Korea

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump will visit five countries in Asia in November on a marathon trip that will be focused on his efforts to confront North Korea over its nuclear and ballistic missile programs.

Trump’s itinerary features a swing through the major powers in Northeast Asia — Japan, South Korea and China — whose leaders he has met with several times already in a bid to develop a strategy to increase pressure on Pyongyang.

The president also will participate in regional economic and security conferences in Vietnam and the Philippines, the White House announced Friday.

Among the leaders Trump could meet during his trip is Russian President Vladimir Putin, also expected to attend the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Da Nang, Vietnam.

Trump also will hold bilateral meetings with Chinese President Xi Jinping, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and South Korean President Moon Jaein.

It is not clear whether Trump intends to hold bilateral meetings with Vietnamese leaders or Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte, who is hosting the Association of Southeast Asian Nations conference in Manila. Duterte has come under international criticism for his administration’s brutal crackdown on drug trafficking that has resulted in thousands of extrajudicial killings.

Trump praised Duterte’s drug war in a phone call in April when the American president sought to enlist his counterpart to lobby China to put more pressure on North Korea.

Trump’s “engagements will strengthen the international resolve to confront the North Korean threat and ensure the complete, verifiable, and irreversible denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula,” the White House said in a statement announcing the trip.

Trump announced last week that he had signed an executive action allowing the Treasury Department greater authority to sanction foreign businesses and individuals that trade with North Korea, an effort to cut off funding that Kim Jong Un’s regime could use for its weapons programs.

That move followed Trump’s speech at the United Nations General Assembly, in which he threatened to “totally destroy” the North if necessary and referred derisively to Kim as the “rocket man.”

Kim lambasted Trump in a rare direct address, and Pyongyang said the president’s speech amounted to a declaration of war, a charge the White House rejected.

On his trip, Trump also is expected to focus on economics and trade.