President Donald Trump tweeted on Friday that he had reversed his administration’s decision to slap new sanctions on North Korea — a move which took officials at the US Treasury Department by surprise.
Mr Trump delivered the news from his private club in Palm Beach, Florida, writing, “It was announced today by the US Treasury that additional large scale Sanctions would be added to those already existing Sanctions on North Korea. I have today ordered the withdrawal of those additional Sanctions!”
A problem arose when the Treasury did not announce any new action affecting North Korea on Friday, let alone “additional large scale Sanctions”.
The administration on Thursday did sanction two Chinese shipping companies suspected of helping North Korea evade sanctions — but not the country itself.
Press secretary Sarah Sanders issued only a brief statement saying that Mr Trump “likes” North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and “doesn’t think these sanctions will be necessary”.
But a person familiar with the action later told The Associated Press that Mr Trump’s tweet was not about reversing existing sanctions.
Instead, the person said, the president was talking about not going forward with additional large-scale sanctions on North Korea at this time.
It was the latest example of the confusion sometimes sparked by Mr Trump’s governance-by-tweet, which has often sent agency heads scrambling, trying to figure out what he meant or trying to implement policy proclamations that have not gone through traditional vetting processes.
Mr Trump’s tweet took Treasury officials by surprise and prompted reporters to bombard officials at the White House National Security Council and Treasury Department with questions. All declined to comment.
The reversal came a day after the Treasury Department announced the first targeted actions taken against Pyongyang since Mr Trump and Mr Kim met in Hanoi, Vietnam, last month for negotiations about North Korea’s nuclear weapons programme.
The meeting ended without a deal.
In addition to Mr Trump’s talks with North Korea, the US is in delicate trade negotiations with China.
It is unclear whether Mr Trump’s decision was related to North Korea’s move on Friday to abruptly withdraw its staff from a liaison office with South Korea.
That development is likely to put a damper on ties between the North and South and further complicate global diplomacy on North Korea’s nuclear programme.
The withdrawal also is seen as a major setback for South Korean President Moon Jae-in, who has sought to improve relations with North Korea alongside the nuclear negotiations between the North and the United States.
North Korea said it was withdrawing its staff under instructions from unspecified “higher-level authorities”, according to a Unification Ministry statement.
It did not say whether the withdrawal would be temporary or permanent. South Korea called the North’s decision regrettable and urged the North to return its staff to the liaison office soon.
When the administration announced the sanctions on Thursday against the Chinese shipping companies, administration officials briefed reporters, saying the sanctions were evidence the US was maintaining pressure on North Korea in an effort to coax its leader to give up his nuclear weapons programme.
Mr Trump’s national security adviser John Bolton called it an “Important” action, tweeting, “The maritime industry must do more to stop North Korea’s illicit shipping practices.”
The Treasury Department sanctioned Dalian Haibo International Freight Co Ltd and Liaoning Danxing International Forwarding Co Ltd for using deceptive methods to circumvent international and US sanctions and the US commitment to implementing existing UN Security Council resolutions.
AP calls to the two companies rang without response on Friday.
The Treasury Department, in coordination with the State Department and the US Coast Guard, also updated a North Korea shipping advisory, adding dozens of vessels thought to be doing ship-to-ship transfers with North Korean tankers or exported North Korean coal in violation of sanctions.
Two senior administration officials said that illegal ship-to-ship transfers that violate US and international sanctions have increased and that not all countries, including China, are implementing the restrictions.
They said the deceptive practices include disabling or manipulating ship identification systems, repainting the names on vessels and falsifying cargo documents.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article