© Saul Loeb / Reuters
In another in a bizarre series of tweets, Trump labelled North Korea "an embarrassment to China" and took aim at allies South Korea, accusing Seoul of trying to 'appease' its northern neighbors.
The threat of ending trade relations with "any country doing business with North Korea" once again raises the prospect of a potentially-disastrous trade war between the US and China.
China receives 90 percent of the goods in North Korea's $2.83 billion-a-year export trade, making it "North Korea's only economic backer of any importance," according to Nicholas Eberstadt, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
According to the Observatory of Economic Complexity, North Korea has the 119th largest economy in the world, with China leading India, Pakistan, Russia, Thailand and the Philippines as their largest trade partner.
It's not known how the prospect of further sanctions will impact North Korea.
While Pyongyang imports most of its food and energy supplies from its neighbor, China's imports from North Korea are mostly made up of seafood, textiles and the minerals. Coal briquettes are Pyongyang's top export, providing the government coffers with $951 million per year.
The latest UN sanctions imposed on North Korea target its key exports including coal, iron, iron ore, lead, lead ore and seafood.
According to the Council on Foreign Relations, the secretive state's trade with China rose nearly 40 percent this year compared with the same period in 2016, this despite a noticeable cooling of relations between Beijing and Pyongyang.
China also provide the vast majority of food aid. Since 1995, China, along with Japan, South Korea and the US, have provided more than 75 percent of food aid to North Korea. As relations with all other food aid contributors has deteriorated, only China's contribution has remained consistent.
It's feared that any move by the US to cut off trade relations with China, the third-largest destination for its goods and services, would precipitate a global economic meltdown.
More immediately, however, it's forecast that a trade embargo would have a catastrophic impact on the US labor and retail markets.
According to the US-China Business Council, the two countries' trade relationship is said to support roughly 2.6 million jobs across a number of industries in the US. In total, the two countries traded $578 billion-worth of goods in 2016.
In comparison, Forbes reported that trade between the US and India, North Korea's other main trading partner, is worth a total of $68 billion.
There is also a significant trade imbalance between the countries.
Last year, the US imported $462 billion in Chinese goods and exported $115 billion in goods to China, according to the Census Bureau at the US Department of Commerce.
China also owns an estimated $1.3 trillion in US Treasury bills, notes and bonds, making it the number one investor among foreign governments. US domestic investors, including individuals and corporations, as well as Federal and local government, make up two thirds of all holders of Treasuries.
According to The Economist, any attempt to not repay their Treasuries holdings to China - by default, or in this instance, a sweeping embargo - would result in "cataclysmic consequences for the economy."
The confluence of events on the Korean peninsula may be Trump's chance to correct what he has long seen as an unfair trading arrangement with China, a gripe which he made a central pillar to his unlikely run to the presidency in 2016.
'Unacceptable': China slams Trump's threat to end commerce with N. Korea's trade partners
China has warned that Donald Trump's threat to cut off trade with countries that deal with Pyongyang would be "unacceptable" and "unfair" to Beijing. It also stressed that Beijing cannot be the sole player in resolving the North Korean crisis.
"What is definitely unacceptable to us is that on the one hand we work so hard to peacefully resolve this issue and on the other hand our interests are subject to sanctions and jeopardized," Foreign Ministry spokesperson Geng Shuang said during a Monday news briefing, as quoted by AP. "This is unfair."
It comes after Trump warned on Sunday that the US is considering "stopping all trade with any country doing business with North Korea."
Sanctions & pressure
When asked on Monday whether Beijing would support tougher UN sanctions including cutting off oil supplies to North Korea, Geng said that whatever happened would depend on discussions among UN Security Council members.
He added that China - one of five permanent Security Council members with the power to veto UN actions - would take part in a "responsible and reconstructive way."
Geng also addressed Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull's recent remark that Beijing "has by far the greatest leverage" as Pyongyang's main trading partner and needs to "step up now and bring this regime to its senses."
"We keep stressing that we cannot solely rely on China to resolve this issue," Geng said. "We need all parties to work in the same direction."
China has previously noted that it is not solely responsible for ending the crisis on the Korean Peninsula.
In July, Geng said that "certain people" had been "exaggerating and giving prominence to the so-called 'China responsibility theory'," in an apparent reference to Trump's repeated calls for Beijing to put pressure on Pyongyang.
China has repeatedly called for all sides to avoid further provocations in the crisis, warning last week that tensions on the peninsula were at "tipping point" and "approaching a crisis."
Trump will be 'deposed immediately' if he blocks trade with China over N. Korea - Assange
If Donald Trump blocks trade with China for being a North Korean trade partner, then he'll be immediately overthrown, says WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange, responding to Trump's tweet threatening to ban trade with states that do business with Pyongyang.
"90 percent of North Korea's trade is with China. If Trump blocks $650B[illion] of US trade with China he'll be deposed immediately," Assange tweeted.
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