Trump, frustrated over N. Korea, has blunt talk with Xi
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump, frustrated by China’s unwillingness to lean on North Korea, has told the Chinese leader that the U.S. is prepared to act on its own in pressuring the nuclear-armed government in Pyongyang, senior administration officials said.
Trump’s warning, delivered in a cordial but blunt phone call on Sunday night to President Xi Jinping, came after a flurry of actions by the United States — selling weapons to Taiwan, threatening trade sanctions and branding China for human trafficking — that rankled the Chinese and left little doubt that the honeymoon between the two leaders was over.
After returning from his weekend getaway in Bedminster, N.J., late Monday, Trump noted on Twitter that North Korea had launched another ballistic missile, which landed in the sea between North Korea and Japan. He suggested it was time for China to act.
“Perhaps China will put a heavy move on North Korea and end this nonsense once and for all!” he wrote.
U.S. officials, who would not be named talking about the continuing dialogue with the Chinese, said they hoped the tough steps by the U.S. would spur Xi to reconsider his reluctance to press North Korea. But Trump, one official said, has fewer illusions that China will radically alter its approach to its reclusive neighbor, which is driven more by fear of a chaotic upheaval there than by concern about its nuclear and missile programs.
That leaves the president in a familiar bind on North Korea as he prepares to leave for a Group of 20 meeting this week in Germany, where he will meet with Xi as well as the leaders of Japan and South Korea.
Without the full weight of China, pressure tactics are unlikely to force North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong Un, to change course. Yet diplomatic engagement — which Xi continues to push, according to officials — is not a step Trump is ready to consider, after the death last month of an American college student, Otto Warmbier, who was held captive in Pyongyang for 17 months.
A go-it-alone approach by Trump would also furtherantagonize China, since it would require black listing multiple Chinese banks and companies that do business with the North.
The precarious state of U.S.-China relations was captured by the way the two sides characterized the call. The White House said only that Trump had raised the “growing threat” of North Korea’s weapons programs with Xi. The Chinese, in a more detailed statement, said the relationship was being “affected by some negative factors.”
The latest of these was a naval maneuver in which a U.S. guided-missile destroyer sailed near disputed territory claimed by Beijing in the South China Sea. The movement by the warship, the USS Stethem, off Triton Island in the Paracel archipelago was called a “serious political and military provocation” by Beijing.
Still, neither leader appearedready to abandon the rap port Trump and Xi established in April at a meeting in Palm Beach, Fla. Trump avoided any personal jabs at Xi; the Chinese government said tensions were to be expected in a relationship this complex. But each leader has learned a hard lesson about the other, according to officials and outside analysts.