Trump accuses China of making North Korea talks 'more difficult'

WASHINGTON (BLOOMBERG) - President Donald Trump said negotiations with North Korea over the nation's nuclear weapons programme are "doing well" but an ongoing trade dispute with China is getting in the way.

"China makes it much more difficult," Mr Trump told reporters on Wednesday (Aug 29) at the White House. "China probably has a great influence over North Korea."

The comments come just days after Mr Trump called off a trip to North Korea by Secretary of State Michael Pompeo, saying there hadn't been enough progress in talks aimed at denuclearising the Korean peninsula.

In a series of tweets last Friday, Mr Trump said Mr Pompeo would likely return to North Korea after US trade disputes with China were resolved.

The US has leaned heavily on China to help enforce tougher sanctions imposed last year against Mr Kim Jong Un's regime because the country is Pyongyang's largest trading partner and shares a border with the isolated nation.

China "is the route to North Korea", Mr Trump said on Wednesday.

The trade war between the US and China is primed to escalate further after their governments failed to make progress in two days of talks last week. The two sides had met with low expectations for the meetings and no further talks had been scheduled, a person familiar with the discussions said.

In the past week, while the two sides were talking, the US slapped tariffs on a further US$16 billion (S$22 billion) of Chinese imports.

Retaliation by Beijing will bring the amount of trade affected by the dispute to US$100 billion, with more to come.

Looming now are new tariffs that Mr Trump has threatened to impose on some US$200 billion in annual imports from China, and Beijing's already-promised retaliation.

"I don't like to call it a trade war," Mr Trump said Wednesday.

In the months since Mr Trump and Mr Kim met in Singapore, the US has struggled to show signs of progress in its bid to get North Korea to dismantle its nuclear weapons programme.

Mr Pompeo conceded before the Senate recently that Mr Kim's regime continues producing fissile material and has provided no inventory of its nuclear programme and facilities.

In a diplomatic gesture to Pyongyang in June, Mr Trump suspended what he called "war games" with South Korea, saying he believed Mr Kim "wants to get it done" on denuclearisation.

Defence Secretary Jim Mattis on Tuesday said the US doesn't plan to suspend more joint military drills amid reports that North Korea was rejecting American demands to give up nuclear warheads.

The US has conducted military exercises on the Korean peninsula since the mid-1950s and holds a handful of joint operations with South Korea every year, which the Pentagon calls a means of ensuring the two forces are able to work together in the event of an attack.

The annual drills, separate from regular training programmes, have long angered North Korea's leaders.