As North Korea’s biggest trading partner, Beijing needs to enforce new UN sanctions on Pyongyang agreed this week or face the threat of being blocked from access to the international dollar system, US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin warned.
Another senior administration official told Reuters any such “secondary sanctions” on Chinese banks and other companies were on hold for now to give Beijing time to show it was prepared to fully enforce sanctions.
The toughest warnings yet from the world’s biggest economy to the second largest came as US President Donald Trump said much more will be needed to deal with Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile program.
The UN Security Council on Monday voted unanimously to boost sanctions, banning textile exports and capping fuel supplies, drawing from Pyongyang a threat of retaliation against the US. North Korea’s sixth and largest nuclear test this month prompted the UN action.
A tougher US draft calling for a full embargo on North Korean oil imports was weakened to win the support of China and Russia, both of which hold UN veto power.
Much of North Korea’s energy is generated from burning domestic coal, but oil is used by the military as well as in transport and agriculture.
China supplies nearly all of North Korea’s crude oil, but no longer reports its shipments to the country, According to South Korean data it ships about 500,000 metric tons of crude a year across its border with North Korea, while the UN says it also exports over 200,000 tons of oil products across the same border.
Analysts said a full oil embargo on Pyongyang could destabilise the country.
“If China cuts off oil supply, North Korea would not survive on its own for three months and everything in North Korea would be paralysed,” Cho Bong-hyun, who heads research on North Korea’s economy at IBK Bank in Seoul, said in a Reuters report in April.
“This could increase the possibility of North Korea’s collapse and have an adverse impact on China as well,” he said.
Read: Japan’s history shows oil embargoes are dance with disaster
Asked if Trump may cut off Chinese banks from the US financial system, White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said: “All options are on the table. The president has also said that he wants every country involved to step up and do more.”
Washington so far has held off on new sanctions against China’s banks and other companies doing business with North Korea, given fears of retaliation by Beijing and far-reaching damage to the world economy.
Russia and China both say they respect UN sanctions and have called on the United States to return to negotiations with North Korea.
“Illegal and unlawful”
The North Korean ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, Han Tae Song, rejected the UN resolution as “illegal and unlawful” and said Washington was “fired up for political, economic, and military confrontation.”
He added: “The forthcoming measures … will make the U.S. suffer the greatest pain it ever experienced in its history.”
Han did not elaborate, but North Korea frequently vows to destroy the United States.
The UN resolution calls on countries to inspect vessels at sea, with the consent of the flag state, if they have reasonable grounds to believe ships are carrying prohibited cargo to North Korea.
It also bans joint ventures with North Korean entities, except for non-profit public utility infrastructure projects, and prohibits countries from bringing in new North Korean workers.
US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said the sanctions could reduce North Korean annual revenue by $500 million. The United States has said sanctions agreed in August could slash North Korea’s $3 billion in exports by a third.
But Joseph DeThomas, a former State Department official who worked on Iran and North Korea sanctions, questioned whether the new steps would have a major impact.
The labour ban would be almost impossible to police and trade statistics greatly overstated North Korea’s earnings from textiles, he said.
Frustrated US lawmakers called at a House hearing on Tuesday for a “supercharged” response to North Korea and said Washington should act alone if necessary to stiffen sanctions on Chinese firms and any country doing business with Pyongyang.
At the hearing, US officials released intelligence findings that they said showed how North Korea earns income from smuggling coal and other commodities to Russia and China.
Korea is the ideal place for the US imperialism to be stopped for good. China could inflict on the US in Korea a crushing conventional war defeat. China could throw into such a conflict every resource it has, while the US could hardly bring to Korea more than about 100,000 soldiers. While the US has theoretical air superiority over China, China could easily sink any aircraft carrier coming close to Korea, and US airfields in Korea could easily be destroyed. Seeing that the Korean war is not over, North Korea could launch a land attack on South Korea which would lead to the fall of Seoul and the destruction of much of South Korean armed forces. If the US were foolish enough to send an expeditionary force to Korea, China could throw 500,000 troops into the battle, leaving the US with no chances to resist. Seeing that tactical nuclear weapons could not be used without an equivalent Chinese answer, the US would have no way to win such a war. At the end of which we would be free from US bullying all over the world. Worth thinking about…
And then you woke up and realised you had a wet dream !!
An Economic Lesson for China and Russia
Paul Craig Roberts
Is there anyone in Trump’s government who is not an imbecile?
After years of endless military threats against Russia—remember CIA deputy director Mike Morell saying on TV (Charlie Rose show) that the US should start killing Russians to give them a message, and Army Chief of Staff Mark Milley threatening “We’ll beat you harder than you have ever been beaten before”—now the US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin threatens China. If China doesn’t abide by Washington’s new sanctions on North Korea, Mnuchin said the US “will put additional sanctions on them [China] and prevent them from assessing the US and international dollar system.”
https://www.rt.com/usa/403118-usa-china-sanctions-north-korea/
Here is the broke US government $20 trillion in public debt, having to print money with which to buy its own bonds, threatening the second largest economy in the world, an economy on purchasing power parity terms that is larger than the US economy.
Take a moment to think about Mnuchin’s threat to China. How many US firms are located in China? It is not only Apple and Nike. Would sanctions on China mean that the US firms could not sell their Chinese made products in the US or anywhere outside China? Do you think the global US corporations would stand for this?
What if China responded by nationalizing all US factories and all Western owned banks in China and Hong Kong?
Mnuchin is like the imbecile Nikki Haley. He doesn’t know who he is threatening.
Consider Mnuchin’s threat to exclude China from the international dollar system. Nothing could do more harm to the US and more good to China. A huge amount of economic transactions would simply exit the dollar system, reducing its scope and importance. Most importantly, it would finally dawn on the Chinese and Russian governments that being a part of the dollar system is a massive liability with no benefits. Russia and China should years ago have created their own system. Being part of Washington’s system simply lets Washington make threats and impose sanctions.
The reason Russia and China are blind to this is that they foolishly sent students to the US to study economics. These students returned completely brainwashed with neoliberal economics, “junk economics” in Michael Hudson’s term. This American economics makes Russian and Chinese economists de facto American stooges. They support policies that serve Washington instead of their own countries.
If China and Russia want to be sovereign countries, they must pray that the imbecile Mnuchin does cut them off from the dollar system that exploits them. Then Russia and China will have to put in place their own system and learn real economics instead of propaganda posing as economics that serves Washington’s interest.
You really believe in your vision. Poor guy. Rember that conventional warfare is now obsolete. Those who has the genius in cyber technology will control this planet and North Korea and China are very far from that.
Camilo Nogadas Garcia camilo read abt china very well you will realise that american cannot sustain and will awar whether of words or convetional coz u dont know who nursed nk to that level and nk alone can bring down aregime in sk and japan.china is the secon largest economy in the world if not the 1st.so china needs america less than america needs her
US is beginning to sound like an Emperor without clothes on. Their domination of the global economy is long gone and they are lashing out. But China is the wrong guy to take on.In a trade war they are ready and can absorb pains more than Americans.