President Trump on Friday announced new sanctions against North Korea over its nuclear program – tightening the noose on Pyongyang by targeting its shipping and trading companies.
The president used his campaign-style address at the Conservative Political Action Conference to tout the new measures as “the heaviest sanctions ever imposed on a country before.”
“And frankly, hopefully, something positive can happen. We will see. Hopefully, something positive can happen,” Trump said at the end of his speech in suburban Washington.
In addressing Team Trump’s biggest national security challenge, the US Treasury sanctioned one person, 27 companies and 28 ships, according to a statement on the agency’s website.
The ships are located, registered or flagged in North Korea, China, Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Marshall Islands, Tanzania, Panama and Comoros, according to the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control.
The person targeted is Taiwanese citizen Tsang Yung Yuan and two companies he owns or controls.
Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said the sanctions will help prevent the North from conducting “evasive maritime activities that facilitate illicit coal and fuel transports and erode its abilities to ship goods through international waters.”
He vowed that Washington would “do everything” to stop ship-to-ship transfers.
At a briefing in Washington, Mnuchin displayed photos he said showed images from December that revealed ship-to-ship transfers of items destined for North Korea in an attempt to evade sanctions.
“We are putting companies and countries across the world on notice that this administration views compliance with US and UN sanctions as a national security imperative,” he said. “Those who trade with North Korea do so at their own peril.”
The US also issued a global shipping advisory highlighting the sanctions risk to those who enable shipments of goods to and from the North.
It alerted industries to North Korea’s “deceptive shipping practices,” which includes falsifying the identity of vessels and disabling transponders that track ships’ movements.
Mnuchin said the US has now imposed more than 450 sanctions against the hermit kingdom, including “virtually all their ships that they’re using at this moment in time.”
The UN Security Council has imposed three sets of sanctions on the North in the past year to deprive it of funding and materials for its nuclear and ballistic missile program, which poses a threat to the US mainland.
First daughter Ivanka Trump, who arrived in South Korea on Friday to attend the closing ceremony of the Winter Olympics, spoke to South Korean President Moon Jae-in about the new sanctions before the announcement, Mnuchin said.
“Mrs. Trump delivered a personal message to President Moon from President Trump about today’s North Korea related sanctions announcement at a small meeting at the Blue House,” the White House said.
“They also discussed the continued effort on the joint maximum pressure campaign against North Korea.”
With Post Wires