Following 'fire and fury,' Trump looks to ease tensions in Asia

President Trump, following days of bellicose threats toward North Korea and jitters about a looming trade war with China, moved on several fronts Monday to ease tensions in East Asia, after making the region a flash point for his administration.
 
As he opened a long-awaited trade action against China, Trump used uncharacteristically restrained language and a multistep bureaucratic process that will likely put off punitive steps against Beijing for months, if not forever. On North Korea several of the president’s top advisers tried to tamp down fears of a clash after his threat to rain “fire and fury” on the regime there.

 
In Seoul, Gen Joseph F Dunford Jr., the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, assured President Moon Jae-in of South Korea that military options against North Korea were a last resort. His message was the latest effort to reinforce a sense of calm that was earlier telegraphed by Defence Secretary Jim Mattis and Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson.
 

Taken together, the administration’s tempered words underscored the complex reality that Trump faces in Asia: Having explicitly linked China’s cooperation on North Korea with his trade policy toward Beijing, the president is now softening his tough trade rhetoric to enlist China’s support in combating a nuclear threat from Pyongyang. Trump campaigned against China as a relentless thief of American jobs, and promised to stand up to Beijing. But on Monday, as he signed a memo authorising an investigation of China’s theft and forced transfer of technology from American companies, the president mentioned China by name only once, and framed the issue as a broader problem.

 
“The theft of intellectual property by foreign countries costs our nation millions of jobs, and billions and billions of dollars,” Trump said, flanked by corporate executives. “For too long, this wealth has been drained from our country while Washington has done nothing.”
 
“They have never done anything about it,” he declared. “But Washington will turn a blind eye no longer.”
 
Trump pledged to defend American companies from counterfeiting and piracy. But the document he signed in the Oval Office only authorises the United States Trade Representative to consider whether to begin an investigation.
 
That all but guarantees that the United States will not take any action against China, at least until after Trump meets President Xi Jinping in Beijing this fall. Trump, a senior official said, warned Xi of the impending trade action in a phone call late on Friday that was largely devoted to cooperating on the North Korea threat.

 
On Tuesday, China’s Ministry of Commerce warned that if the investigation were too aggressive, it would “harm both sides’ trade relations and companies.”
 
©2017 The New York Times News Service