Three moves from Donald Trump’s trade war playbook that would work for North Korea

Jonathan Jeffrey says the US president should keep his second summit with Kim Jong-un low key, insist North Korea negotiate with Pompeo and his team, and make clear that further diplomacy hinges on incremental steps towards denuclearisation

Jonathan Jeffrey

Published: 3:00am, 23 Jan 2019

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Last week, US President Donald Trump announced what many had long expected: he will once again meet North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. Amid bipartisan domestic concern, including Vice-President Mike Pence’s public warning just two days earlier that Pyongyang had failed to embark on “concrete steps” to denuclearise, Trump’s decision to move forward with a second summit at the end of February is risky.

He must approach this meeting differently from his headline-making, first summit with Kim in Singapore in June last year, which failed to lead to any substantive progress on denuclearisation and merely validated Kim’s stature as the leader of a now-nuclear power.

Instead of replicating the diplomatic model he used in Singapore, Trump would be wise to consult his own playbook from just last month, when he met Chinese President Xi Jinping in Buenos Aires to find a resolution to the trade war. Despite Washington’s imposition of tariffs on US$250 billion worth of Chinese goods and Beijing’s retaliation against American farmers and manufacturers, the two sides have reportedly made significant progress, largely due to Trump’s new, more measured diplomatic strategy in Argentina.

Meeting after the G20 summit over a private dinner closed to the press, Trump and Xi declined to release a joint statement of their discussion. Instead, Trump appointed US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer to serve as his point man during the trade truce, encouraging future rounds of negotiations and dispelling a lack of clarity that had permeated the Trump administration as trade traditionalists and hawks competed for influence.

Additionally, Trump made clear the truce would come to an end in 90 days, underscoring that progress was essential for the detente to continue. These three key aspects of Trump’s Buenos Aires strategy – a low-key initial summit, a demand for lower-level negotiations and a commitment to a clear timeline – can all be replicated in diplomacy with North Korea.

First, just as he met Xi with little fanfare on the sidelines of the G20 summit, to cement a temporary trade truce, Trump can use a second summit with Kim to quietly resuscitate diplomacy with North Korea.

Trump’s critics have rightly questioned his willingness to jump into a second summit after the event in Singapore quickly became a public relations circus that enabled Kim to enhance his credibility with live, wall-to-wall coverage of his handshake with Trump.

But if Trump adopts a less public approach to the next meeting, he can use it to force Pyongyang to make more substantive diplomatic commitments.

Second, similar to how Trump empowered Lighthizer’s team to lead trade talks with China, the president should make clear to Kim that North Korea must deal with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and his department in all future engagement.

Though Trump had anointed Pompeo as the main American negotiator on North Korean denuclearisation last year, Pyongyang has sought to disregard him and deal directly with Trump.

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Pompeo’s special representative for North Korea, Stephen Biegun, has even faced challenges scheduling meetings with his North Korean counterparts. Akin to Trump making clear to Beijing that Chinese officials must deal directly with Lighthizer during trade discussions, he should look to empower Pompeo and Biegun, warning Pyongyang that disregarding his team at the State Department is tantamount to abandoning diplomacy.

Third, Trump should clarify that further diplomacy is contingent on incremental and demonstrable steps towards denuclearisation, just as he laid out a clear ultimatum to Xi and has threatened to increase sanctions in March if trade negotiators fail to make progress.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is flanked by US Special Representative for North Korea Stephen Biegun (right) and North Korean Vice-Chairman Kim Yong-chol before a meeting in Washington on January 18. Photo: AFP

Though Trump boldly tweeted after the Singapore summit that North Korea was “no longer a nuclear threat”, his agreement at that meeting failed to establish a schedule for future action or even guarantee that North Korea would denuclearise. However, Trump has the opportunity to use the second summit to change course, imposing a timetable and threatening consequences if Pyongyang fails to make changes.

All three of these actions are doable, and Trump’s own course of action on Chinese trade issues prove their success. Of course, if Trump takes this approach, he risks aggravating tense relations with North Korea, which have benefited from the lack of diplomatic coordination.

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But if Kim chooses to abandon the more structured approach, he may have more to lose. North Korea has already gained from stronger relations with South Korea, new road and rail links on the Korean peninsula and reduced US-South Korea military drills – all of which would be at risk if fledgling diplomacy with Washington ends.

Just as Beijing cannot afford to disregard the trade framework brokered at the G20, Pyongyang may not be able to ignore Trump’s calls for a more coordinated diplomatic approach.

Jonathan Jeffrey is a political risk consultant and writer based in Washington. In 2017, he was named an inaugural Schwarzman Scholar at Tsinghua University in Beijing. Jeffrey graduated from Harvard College in 2016

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