NEW YORK – President Trump took executive action on Thursday to crack down on individuals, banks, and businesses that are involved in trade with North Korea, as his administration seeks to further pressure Pyongyang into abandoning its nuclear and ballistic missile programs.
“Foreign banks will face a clear choice: do business with the United States or facilitate trade with the lawless regime in North Korea,” Trump said during a summit with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and South Korean President Moon Jae-in. “It is unacceptable that others financially support this criminal, rogue regime.”
#BREAKING: Trump issues executive order enhancing Treasury’s ability to target businesses who engage with North Korea pic.twitter.com/Xm9NtZFCqm— Washington Examiner (@dcexaminer) September 21, 2017
Trump said his executive order, announced shortly after Chinese officials said the country had instructed its banks to strictly enforce international sanctions against North Korea, will “cut off sources of revenue that fund North Korea’s efforts to develop the deadliest weapons known to humankind” by directing the Treasury Department to target those conducting trade in “goods, services, or technology” with the communist regime.
“The order also includes measures designed to disrupt critical North Korean shipping and trade networks,” the president added. “This is a complete denuclearization of North Korea that we seek. We cannot have this as a world body any longer.”
The president’s announcement came as he and his counterparts from Japan and South Korea planned to discuss a path forward that deals with the Kim Jong-un’s increased aggression in the region without taking military action.
“In the last three weeks, two times North Korea launched ballistic missiles over Japan and they conducted six nuclear tests,” Abe said during the luncheon with Trump, Moon and senior officials from all three countries. “The scale of the tests was beyond the scale of the Hiroshima bombs.”
“This is an intolerable, outrageous act,” he said.
U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told reporters late Wednesday that North Korea has seen “fuel shortages” due to international sanctions passed by the UN earlier this month.
“We knew that these sanctions are going to take some time to be felt because we knew that the North Koreans… had basically stockpiled a lot of inventory early in the year when they saw the administration coming in, in anticipation of things perhaps changing,” Tillerson said at an evening press conference with reporters.
The 15-member U.N. Security Council passed fresh sanctions on Sept. 12 to increase economic pressure on North Korea by capping its oil imports, ending overseas laborer contracts, and halting its joint ventures with other countries.
“We are done trying to prod the regime to do the right thing, we are now trying to stop it from having the ability to do the wrong thing,” U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley had said at the time.
North Korean officials have compared the goal of the sanctions – to get leader Kim Jong Un to stop his nuclear pursuits – to “a delusion tantamount to expecting foolishly that the ocean would dry up.”
But Trump has declined to back away from threatening further action if North Korea does not comply with international demands to end its nuclear program. In remarks to the U.N. on Tuesday, the president said that if the U.S. is “forced to defend itself or its allies, we will have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea.”
“Rocket Man is on a suicide mission for himself and his regime,” the president said in one of the most notable lines of his speech.
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin will hold a press conference to discuss implementation of the latest executive order following Trump’s meeting with the leaders from Japan and South Korea.
