U.S. Threatens China Over North Korea Sanctions

Treasury officials warn of measures if Beijing doesn’t do more to isolate Pyongyang

The Trump administration threatened on Tuesday to impose further sanctions on China if Beijing doesn’t do more to shut down banks and other Chinese firms aiding North Korea.

If China doesn’t implement the United Nations sanctions regime it has backed, “We will put additional sanctions on them and prevent them from accessing the U.S. and international dollar system,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said on Tuesday at a conference.

The statement followed Monday’s passage by the United Nations Security Council of new sanctions against North Korea—measures that were softened, diplomats said, to win approval from China and Russia, which wield veto power.

President Donald Trump also signaled that the U.S. was looking past the watered-down U.N. measures. He said the sanctions move was “not a big deal.”

“Those sanctions are nothing compared to what will ultimately have to happen,” Mr. Trump said.

U.S. officials and U.N. investigators have said China hasn’t moved robustly enough to shut down networks they say are financing North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s regime and weapons programs, including activities sanctioned by the U.N.

Earlier Tuesday, China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said Beijing strictly enforces all U.N. resolutions.

Washington is intent on depriving Pyongyang of all its revenue sources even if it means unilaterally targeting firms in China, the world’s second largest economy, Treasury’s assistant secretary for terror finance Marshall Billingslea said Tuesday in testimony to a House Foreign Affairs subcommittee.

Treasury’s recent sanctions targeting a Chinese bank and other Chinese firms were meant to be a “message to China,” Mr. Billingslea said. “We are capable of tracking North Korea’s trade in banned goods, such as coal, despite elaborate evasion schemes, and we will act even if the Chinese government will not.”

Mr. Billingslea’s testimony was the first from a top Trump Treasury sanctions official on Capitol Hill, and the most comprehensive explanation of the administration’s North Korea sanctions strategy to date.

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