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A tweet from US President Donald Trump on Mar. 22 announcing he’d canceled US Treasury Department sanctions on Chinese ships suspected of helping North Korea evade existing sanctions. (Trump’s twitter account)
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Claim tweet was about not imposing additional sanctions that were being prepared
The sanctions on North Korea that US President Donald said he’d ordered withdrawn in a tweet on Mar. 22 were not sanctions planned for the future but rather the sanctions announced by the US Treasury Department on the previous day, according to a Bloomberg report. After government officials barely managed to stop Trump from canceling the Treasury Department’s sanctions, they apparently released a farfetched explanation to the public. In a story published on Mar. 26, Bloomberg quoted five sources who said that Trump had attempted to reverse the Treasury Department’s decision on Mar. 21 to impose sanctions on two Chinese shipping companies who were suspected of helping North Korea evade sanctions. “It was announced today by the US Treasury that additional large scale sanctions would be added to those already existing sanctions on North Korea. I have today ordered the withdrawal of those additional sanctions!” Trump wrote on Twitter on Mar. 22. When this tweet sparked a controversy, US administration officials told the press that Trump means the US would not impose additional sanctions that were being prepared, and not that he was reversing the sanctions announced the previous day. Bloomberg described how administration officials first persuaded Trump to change his mind and then provided a misleading explanation of the facts in order to bring the situation under control. Trump has reportedly given the Treasury Department discretion to decide on specific sanctions without his signature. During a meeting of the White House National Security Council that was held before the Treasury Department’s announcement on Mar. 21, Bloomberg reported, “Robert Blair, a national security aide to White House Acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, warned that he didn’t think Trump would support issuing the measures. But National Security Adviser John Bolton, a North Korea hawk, disagreed and argued he knew Trump better than Blair.” Bolton tweeted his support of the Treasury Department’s sanctions shortly after the announcement. But that next afternoon, on Mar. 22, Trump tweeted that he’d “ordered the withdrawal” of the new sanctions. After flustered officials persuaded him otherwise, they told the press that the US would not be imposing additional sanctions on North Korea. In contrast with that explanation, the US government had not actually been working on any additional sanctions against North Korea, Bloomberg quoted two officials as saying. In the end, the confusion over the sanctions on North Korea that lasted from Mar. 21 to 22 was the result of hardliners pushing sanctions without ascertaining Trump’s wishes, Trump abruptly tweeting a cancellation, and administration officials changing the president’s mind and releasing a false explanation to the press. The upshot of this kerfuffle is that we’ve seen once again that Trump doesn’t want to provoke North Korea. It also reconfirmed discord in the US administration between Trump and the hawks in their preferred approach to the North. In the process, Bolton, a leading hardliner, seems to have gotten a tongue lashing from Trump. This sheds new light on Trump’s spontaneity and unpredictability, which is liable to throw even White House aides and administration officials for a loop. By Hwang Joon-bum, Washington correspondent Please direct comments or questions to [english@hani.co.kr]
