Opinion | Three moves from Donald Trump’s trade war playbook that would work for North Korea

Jonathan Jeffrey says the US president should keep his second summit with Kim Jong-un low key, insist North Korea negotiate with Pompeo and his team, and make clear that further diplomacy hinges on incremental steps towards denuclearisation

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North Korea leader Kim Jong-un and US President Donald Trump shake hands during their meeting in Singapore on June 12. The historic summit drew the eyes of the world, but was criticised for resulting in no significant progress on North Korean denuclearisation. Photo: AP

Published: 3:00am, 23 Jan 2019Updated: 8:18am, 23 Jan 2019

Last week, US President Donald Trump announced what many had long expected: he will once again meet North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. Amid bipartisan domestic concern, including Vice-President Mike Pence’s public warning just two days earlier that Pyongyang had failed to embark on “concrete steps” to denuclearise, Trump’s decision to move forward with a second summit at the end of February is risky.

He must approach this meeting differently from his headline-making, first summit with Kim in Singapore in June last year, which failed to lead to any substantive progress on denuclearisation and merely validated Kim’s stature as the leader of a now-nuclear power.

Instead of replicating the diplomatic model he used in Singapore, Trump would be wise to consult his own playbook from just last month, when he met Chinese President Xi Jinping in Buenos Aires to find a resolution to the trade war. Despite Washington’s imposition of tariffs on US$250 billion worth of Chinese goods and Beijing’s retaliation against American farmers and manufacturers, the two sides have reportedly made significant progress, largely due to Trump’s new, more measured diplomatic strategy in Argentina.

Meeting after the G20 summit over a private dinner closed to the press, Trump and Xi declined to release a joint statement of their discussion. Instead, Trump appointed US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer to serve as his point man during the trade truce, encouraging future rounds of negotiations and dispelling a lack of clarity that had permeated the Trump administration as trade traditionalists and hawks competed for influence.

Additionally, Trump made clear the truce would come to an end in 90 days, underscoring that progress was essential for the detente to continue. These three key aspects of Trump’s Buenos Aires strategy – a low-key initial summit, a demand for lower-level negotiations and a commitment to a clear timeline – can all be replicated in diplomacy with North Korea.

First, just as he met Xi with little fanfare on the sidelines of the G20 summit, to cement a temporary trade truce, Trump can use a second summit with Kim to quietly resuscitate diplomacy with North Korea.