What have North Korean nukes got to do with the US-China trade war? Everything
- Donald Trump, Xi Jinping, Kim Jong-un. They’re stuck in a three-way chess game in which two seemingly unconnected issues are being used as leverage
- Here’s what the endgame looks like
How Trump and the US fell for Kim Jong-un’s deadly strategic deception
Each time Trump toughened his tone on trade, Kim was invited to visit China. Why? Because Beijing wanted to send a message to Washington that “you can’t negotiate with Kim without our help”.
Indeed, North Korea could not even survive without Beijing’s support, let alone stand up to the might of America.
Trump’s key strategy on North Korea is to use sanctions to apply maximum pressure on the isolated country. However, such tactics rely on Chinese cooperation, as more than 90 per cent of North Korea’s external trade passes through China.
Following the collapse of the Trump-Kim summit in Hanoi last month, when Pyongyang threatened to withdraw from talks with Washington completely and reconsider its decision to stop missile and nuclear tests, Trump apparently turned to China to break the stalemate.
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That explains why Trump’s envoy on North Korea, Stephen Biegun, was in Beijing this week. Biegun’s China trip, the third since he was appointed last August, came amid claims of progress in the “historic” trade talks. Biegun’s trip also came days before US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin’s trip to Beijing this week and Chinese chief negotiator and Vice-Premier Liu He’s reciprocal visit to Washington for more discussions starting April 3. Those talks are aimed at finalising what Trump has called the “one of the largest deals ever made”.
The North Korea issue has given China leverage over the US in the trade talks. Washington might have demanded too many concessions from Beijing.
Even after several months of to-and-fro, it’s hard to know exactly where things stand between the US and China and between the US and North Korea, or even what has already been agreed on.
As Lighthizer remarked recently, “there’s no agreement on anything until there’s agreement on everything”.
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Following the Hanoi summit with Kim, Trump warned that the trade talks with China could end in a similar disappointing fashion – even as he acknowledged Beijing’s support.
The logic is clear: if Washington and Beijing reach a historic deal on trade, a similar deal between Washington and Pyongyang will probably follow. If they fail to reach such a deal, Beijing will not allow its ally to strike a strategically significant deal with its chief rival regarding the nuclear dispute.
It seems that, in this instance, trade and nuclear weapons are two sides of the same coin. ■
Cary Huang is a veteran China affairs columnist, having written on the topic since the early 1990s