WASHINGTON — The Trump administration imposed new sanctions Tuesday on a slew of North Korean shipping firms and Chinese trading companies in its latest push to isolate the rogue nation over its nuclear weapons development and deprive it of revenue.
The Treasury Department also designated a North Korean corporation involved in exporting workers overseas. The action came a day after the United States returned North Korea to its list of state sponsors of terrorism.
“These designations include companies that have engaged in trade with North Korea cumulatively worth hundreds of millions of dollars,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in a statement. “We are also sanctioning the shipping and transportation companies, and their vessels, that facilitate North Korea’s trade and its deceptive maneuvers.”
Among the companies targeted were four Chinese-based companies and one Chinese individual said to have deep commercial ties with North Korea. The sanctions were imposed under a September executive order that opened the way for the U.S. to punish foreign companies dealing with the North. It prohibits holding U.S. assets or doing business with Americans.
The targeting of Chinese companies is a sore point with Beijing, whose help Trump is counting on to put an economic squeeze on Pyongyang. China recently sent its highest-level envoy to North Korea in two years to discuss the tense state of affairs on the Korean Peninsula.
“China firmly opposes unilateral sanctions out of the U.N. Security Council framework,” the Chinese Embassy in Washington said Tuesday, “especially the imposition of the so-called ‘long-arm jurisdiction’ by other countries in accordance with their domestic laws.”
When President Donald Trump announced the terror designation of North Korea on Monday, he promised to intensify the “maximum pressure” campaign against Pyongyang with the “highest level” of sanctions yet — part of a rolling effort to compel it to negotiate over its nuclear program, which poses an emerged threat to the U.S. mainland.
An editorial Tuesday in North Korea’s ruling party newspaper, Rodong Sinmun, called Trump a “heinous criminal” who had insulted the dignity of the country’s supreme leadership and its socialist system during his recent visit to South Korea. The editorial, carried by the state-run news agency, threatened “merciless punishment.” It did not mention the terror designation or the threat of new sanctions.