US to leave in place N Korea-related sanctions on Chinese shipping firms

Bloomberg

The US will leave in place North Korea-related sanctions on two Chinese shipping companies, and President Donald Trump has no plans to impose additional penalties on Kim Jong-un’s government, according to two people familiar with the matter.
The two people, who were granted anonymity to discuss the issue, spoke hours after Trump threw US sanctions policy towards North Korea into confusion, saying on Twitter that he had ordered the
withdrawal of “additional large scale” penalties his government imposed against the country.
Trump said the new sanctions had been issued on Friday, but the Treasury Department made no such announcement. Treasury announced sanctions against the two shipping companies to punish them for alleged violations of existing sanctions against shipments to North Korea.
Spokesmen for the White House and the Treasury Department didn’t explain Trump’s midday announcement before the end of the day.
Trump has a penchant for making policy on Twitter, catching his own government off-guard. On Thursday, he announced in a tweet that the US should recognise the disputed Golan Heights as Israeli territory, surprising State Department officials.
“This is utterly shocking,” John Smith, a former director of the Office of Foreign Assets Control at Treasury, which issues and polices sanctions, said in an email.
“The president of the United States actively undercut his own sanctions agency for the benefit of North Korea.” Smith left the agency in May.
A second former OFAC official, Sean Kane, said in an email that Trump’s announcement was “unprecedented” and “calls any OFAC action into question when no one can be sure whether they’re speaking for the administration.”
White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a statement: “President Trump likes Chairman Kim and he doesn’t think these sanctions will be necessary.”
One of the two Chinese shipping companies, Dalian Haibo International Freight Co Ltd, is doing business with a sanctioned North Korean company, Treasury said in a statement.
The other, Liaoning Danxing International Forwarding Co Ltd was sanctioned for “operating in the transportation industry in North Korea,” Treasury said.
The US also updated a North Korea shipping advisory, adding dozens of vessels that are believed to have engaged in ship-to-ship transfers of oil with North Korean tankers or exported North Korean coal in order to evade sanctions.