Trump threatens to stop trade with countries doing business with DPRK

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President Donald Trump on Sunday floated cutting off all US trade with any country that does business with the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK).

Trump's tweet came just hours after DPRK's state television said the country successfully tested a hydrogen bomb that can be mounted onto an intercontinental ballistic missile.

This was Pyongyang's sixth nuclear test since 2006 and its most powerful to date.

US President Donald Trump waves to the press as he walks out of St John's Epicopal Church in Washington, DC on September 3, 2017. /VCG Photo

But Trump's threat has been seen as bluster as such a move would have massive economic repercussions for the US as well as the global economy.

The DPRK's economy is relatively small, the 119th largest in the world, according to MIT's Observatory of Economic Complexity. In 2015, the nation had 2.83 billion dollars in exports and 3.47 billion dollars in imports.

A few large economies do business with both the US and the DPRK. Among these are India, Russia, Pakistan, and China, all of which have strong bilateral ties with the US.

It would be virtually impossible for the US to simply stop trading with all these countries. A more likely scenario would be the US pushing for tighter sanctions against the DPRK, observers have noted.

Steven Mnuchin, the US treasury secretary, said he would begin drafting a new package of sanctions.

“It’s clear this behavior is unacceptable. …We’ve already started with sanctions against North Korea but I am going to draft a sanctions package to send to the president for his strong consideration,” Mnuchin told Fox News on Sunday.

US Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin, delivered an on-camera press briefing in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room of the White House, on Monday, July 31, 2017. /VCG Photo

Nikki Haley, the US ambassador to the UN, tweeted on Sunday, saying the US, along with Japan, France, the UK and the Republic of Korea (ROK), has called for an emergency Security Council meeting on the DPRK nuclear issue at 10 a.m. Monday.

Meanwhile, Trump took the opportunity to lash out at Seoul, criticizing the new government's “talk of appeasement” with the DPRK. This came a day after reports emerged that the Trump administration was considering withdrawing from a five-year-old free-trade deal with the ROK.

Pyongyang would like to split the US from the ROK and Japan by threatening the US mainland, and make Washington afraid to come to their defense, Cheryl Rofer, a chemist who worked at the Los Alamos nuclear weapons laboratory and now writes on the Nuclear Diner website, told the Guardian.

"Most diplomacy takes place beneath the public radar: diplomats talking to each other, finding common ground, ways not to embarrass each other,” Rofer said. “Trump and his people have no understanding of such things. Trump is splitting with the ROK all by himself. Kim Jong Un is laughing at him.”

The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a statement on Sunday, expressing firm opposition to Pyongyang's nuclear test.

"The DPRK has ignored the international community's widespread opposition and conducted a nuclear test again. The Chinese government expresses resolute objection to and strong condemnation of it," the ministry's statement said.

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