President Donald Trump promised to slap new sanctions on North Korea as he prepared to meet Thursday with leaders of Japan and South Korea to discuss the growing crisis over Pyongyang’s weapons program, Bloomberg reports.
“We will be putting more sanctions on North Korea,” Trump told reporters in New York, where he is attending the United Nations General Assembly. He didn’t elaborate.
National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster told CNN Thursday morning Trump is taking the steps to try to resolve the problem “short of war.”
Neither Trump nor McMaster described the new sanctions. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin earlier this month warned the U.S. may impose additional sanctions on China, North Korea’s neighbor and main trading partner, to further squeeze the regime of Kim Jong Un. Some Republicans in Congress have urged Trump to target major Chinese banks, including Agricultural Bank of China Ltd. and China Merchants Bank Co., for aiding Kim’s regime.
Mnuchin is scheduled to give a briefing at 3 p.m. in New York.
The United Nations Security Council this month approved another round of sanctions that seek to cut North Korea’s imports of refined petroleum products to 2 million barrels a year, ban textile exports and strengthen inspections of ships that are believed to be carrying cargo in breach of sanctions. But to avert a threatened veto by China and Russia, the action stopped short of a U.S. demand for a total oil embargo and a freeze on Kim’s assets.
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