Trump: China falls short on curbing North Korea

President Trump said on Tuesday that China had not succeeded in getting North Korea to curb its nuclear and ballistic missile programs, an extraordinary admission of failure in his strategy for dealing with the rogue regime of Kim Jong-un. Mr. Trump’s statement — delivered in an almost cavalier tweet, given how ardently he had sought the cooperation of President Xi Jinping of China — came a day after the death of Otto Warmbier, an American college student who had been detained and brutalized in North Korea. Taken together, the developments are a major complication for Mr. Trump’s approach to North Korea, which he has called America’s most urgent foreign threat. He now faces a range of unattractive options: the use of military force; more coercive sanctions, including on Chinese banks that do business with the North; or some kind of opening to Mr. Kim.
“While I greatly appreciate the efforts of President Xi & China to help with North Korea, it has not worked out,” Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter on the eve of a high-level meeting of Chinese and American officials in Washington. “At least I know China tried!”