Why Trump, After North Korea’s Test, Aimed His Sharpest Fire at the South
WASHINGTON — While the world agonized over the huge nuclear test in North Korea
this weekend, President Trump aimed his most pointed rhetorical fire
not at the renegade regime in Pyongyang, but at America’s closest
partner in confronting the crisis: South Korea.
In
taking to Twitter to accuse Seoul of “appeasement,” Mr. Trump was
venting his frustration at a new liberal South Korean government he sees
as both soft on North Korea’s atomic program and resistant to his demand for an overhaul of trade practices that he views as cheating American workers and companies.
For
Mr. Trump, the crisis lays bare how his trade agenda — the bedrock of
his economic populist campaign in 2016 — is increasingly at odds with
the security agenda he has pursued as president. It is largely a problem
of Mr. Trump’s own making. Unlike several of his predecessors, who were
able to press countries on trade issues while cooperating with them on
security, Mr. Trump has explicitly linked the two, painting himself into
a corner.
The
president, known for fighting his political wars simultaneously on
multiple fronts, seems intent on taking on all comers in Asia. The
president on Sunday took a somewhat milder jab at another country he
sees as an adversary on trade, China, saying the North was an “embarrassment” to Beijing, its primary economic patron.
The
president took a harder line later in the day, saying he was
considering the drastic step of “stopping all trade with any country
doing business with North Korea,” but he did not single out China by
name.
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Thus,
what was supposed to be a calm holiday weekend dissolved into jitters
over a dual threat: the specter of nuclear war on the Korean Peninsula,
and the possibility of an economic standoff among world powers, as Mr.
Trump considers walking away from a major trade agreement with South
Korea as early as this week.
Administration
officials said Mr. Trump’s attack-on-all-fronts approach was necessary
to keep the pressure on adversaries and allies alike. But outside
observers saw a danger in Mr. Trump’s efforts to fulfill a core populist
campaign promise on trade even as he tried to use the issue as leverage
on security matters.
“In
a circumstance where we’re going to need close cooperation with not
only South Korea but China as well, he’s coming out swinging at all of
them rather than trying to build support and coordination,” said Ely
Ratner, a top national security official in the Obama administration.
“It just looks so haphazard.”
Still,
Mr. Ratner said North Korea’s latest nuclear test could finally spur
China, which views nuclear tests as far more serious than the North’s
series of ballistic missile launches, to undertake a more serious
crackdown on its neighbor.
“I think the nuclear test has a chance of pushing China into a place it’s never been before,” Mr. Ratner said.
In
a salvo of Twitter messages over six hours on Sunday, Mr. Trump called
North Korea’s biggest nuclear test to date “very hostile and dangerous.”
In invoking South Korean “appeasement,” he criticized Seoul’s proposal
to hold military talks with the North, saying of Pyongyang, “they only
understand one thing” — meaning the threat of military force.
The
Treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, said that he planned to draft a new
sanctions package that would cut economic ties with anyone who did
business with North Korea.
“There’s
a lot we can do to cut them off economically, much more than we’ve
done,” Mr. Mnuchin said, speaking on “Fox News Sunday.” He called
Pyongyang’s actions “unacceptable” and stressed the need for stronger
steps.
Mr.
Trump’s threat to halt trade went much further, suggesting a move that
would dramatically intensify the potential for conflict with China,
which accounts for roughly 85 percent of all trade with the North.
Some
critics dismissed the president’s suggestion as an empty threat,
because, if carried out, it would most likely prompt an immediate
legislative remedy by congressional leaders from both parties.
But it was a hit with Mr. Trump’s target domestic audience.
Stephen
K. Bannon, the president’s ousted chief strategist, said he had pushed
for a tougher stance toward China in the weeks before he left the
administration, casting Mr. Trump’s threats as a victory for the
economic nationalists over the globalists. Until now, he said, his fear
was that the White House debate was going to be won by what he called
“rational accommodationists” toward China.
“This
is 100 percent about China,” Mr. Bannon said. “You’ve got to sanction
the Chinese companies and Chinese financial institutions.”
Earlier
this year, as tensions with North Korea flared, Mr. Trump met with
President Xi Jinping at Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s Florida estate, and
decided to back off labeling China as a currency manipulator in return
for Mr. Xi’s support in pressuring Pyongyang.
That
quid pro quo, critics said, deprived him of leverage after it became
clear that the Chinese government was not going to radically shift
either its North Korean or trade policies. And it left Mr. Trump deeply
frustrated, officials said, especially after his aides also persuaded
him to delay action against steel imports, which would have targeted
China, South Korea, Japan and other exporters.
While
Mr. Trump’s policy toward China will have the greatest long-term
geopolitical implications, it was Mr. Trump’s caustic attack on South
Korea’s leadership on Sunday that took many observers by surprise.
South
Korean officials, in a shift from the previous conservative government,
have called for increased negotiations with the North as a way of
defusing the escalating tensions on the tinderbox Korean Peninsula. Mr.
Trump warned last week that “talking is not the answer.”
President
Moon Jae-in of South Korea and Mr. Trump last spoke on Friday to
discuss the trade situation, but have not talked since the atomic test,
said an administration official with knowledge of the call.
Robert
Einhorn, a former senior State Department nonproliferation expert, said
Mr. Trump’s criticism of the South Korean leader was misguided.
“Moon
has actually been very supportive of the U.S. approach of maximum
pressure and engagement,” Mr. Einhorn said. “Nothing he’s done so far
smacks of appeasement.”
Mr.
Trump’s greatest frustration with Mr. Moon, White House aides said, is
an escalating dispute over South Korea’s chronic trade surplus with the
United States, a topic very much on Mr. Trump’s mind as his poll numbers
slide in industrial Midwestern states.
On
Saturday, before the nuclear test, senior administration officials
confirmed that they were considering withdrawing from United
States-Korea Free Trade Agreement over what they believed was Seoul’s
pursuit of unfair protectionist policies that had harmed the American auto and steel industries.
“I
don’t think that would be good in any circumstances,” said Senator Jeff
Flake, Republican of Arizona and a member of the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee, speaking on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “Now it’s
particularly troubling, given what South Korea is faced with.”
But
Mr. Trump’s decision to take aim at South Korea was as much a function
of his bruising political style as his policy preferences. The
president’s brand is based on projecting strength, and since he could
not throw a real punch at Pyongyang, Seoul was the logical target, said a
member of Mr. Trump’s foreign policy team.
Mr.
Trump’s aides have tried to temper his tweets on North Korea, urging
him to use his cabinet or communications staff to transmit the toughest
threats to Pyongyang. He has been clearing many — but not all — of his
policy-related tweets through his new chief of staff, John F. Kelly. His
messaging on Sunday was in line with that of his national security
staff, a senior administration official said.
The
toughest talk came from Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, who said the
United States would answer any threat from the North with a “massive”
military response.
The president, asked as he left a church service whether he planned to attack North Korea, said, “We’ll see
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