Sino File | What have North Korean nukes got to do with the US-China trade war? Everything

Trade and nuclear weapons. On the surface, they seem like two completely different issues. One is business, the other is geopolitics. But US President Donald Trump has made no bones about linking the two.

This is why the two most watched diplomatic events of the past year or so – the negotiations between the United States and China to alleviate a trade war between the world’s two largest economies and the two summits between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un to avoid a nuclear war between the world’s sole superpower and its most repressive communist state – have been so heavily intertwined.

The two issues are part of a three-way chess game between China, the US and North Korea, one that in recent months has involved diplomats frequently shuttling between the three countries for talks.

Trump, a property tycoon turned president known for being results oriented, sees everything as a commodity that has a price and is thus negotiable. For evidence of that, just look at his book, The Art of the Deal. He has repeatedly suggested there will be trade-offs between the trade-war talks and the negotiations over Pyongyang’s nuclear ambitions. He has switched several times between praising and blaming Beijing for its help and hindrance on North Korea, even as the tariff war escalates and negotiations between the countries falter.

Beijing, too, has used every possible occasion to remind Washington that it can complicate Trump’s pursuit of ridding the North of nuclear weapons if China and the US fail to strike a deal on their trade row.