Kevin Rudd has warned that the world is entering a dangerous new phase with North Korea’s missile test potentially sparking US military action.
Australia’s former prime minister also foreshadowed the potential for a global trade war with Donald Trump considering tariffs on Chinese steel exports. Rudd said the move could spiral into escalating tariff action between nation states that could damage Australia badly.
“We are entering into a dangerous new phase on the North Korea question and both US and Chinese diplomacy in relation to it,” Rudd told ABC AM.
He rated the test, carried out on US Independence Day, eight out of 10 for provocation to Trump.
North Korea has just launched another missile. Does this guy have anything better to do with his life? Hard to believe that South Korea.....
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 4, 2017
....and Japan will put up with this much longer. Perhaps China will put a heavy move on North Korea and end this nonsense once and for all!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 4, 2017
Rudd said the North Korean strategy was to get an intercontinental ballistic missile with a miniaturised warhead to act as a deterrent against the US and preserve its regime.
He said the two US options were to use China to pressure the North Korea to stop its strategy or, if China failed, the US could “threaten or deliver” a unilateral military strike to degrade or remove North Korea’s nuclear capability.
While the US had already urged China to pressure North Korea, Rudd said Trump’s tweets suggested he had lost confidence in the China option.
While I greatly appreciate the efforts of President Xi & China to help with North Korea, it has not worked out. At least I know China tried!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 20, 2017
Trump is also considering plans to restrict imports of steel and aluminium by invoking a rarely used law from the cold war era. The US president could limit imports of goods deemed critical to national defence, a move which would satisfy the “America first” promise in his election campaign.
Rudd said it was still unclear whether the US would apply the tariffs to steel exports from China to the US.
“I think that is very much in flux at the moment but if it is implemented then the likelihood of retaliatory action could lead us in the direction of a trade war that is bad for the global economy and bad for Australia,” Rudd said.
“We are an economy highly dependent on the traded sector of our economy and therefore, once you take a hit to confidence in global trade period, as opposed to open trade and free trade is the norm, and it now entering into the economy of every nation state that we can take action and counteraction, tariff and counter tariff, it all heads in a very bad spiralling direction.”
Rudd urged Malcolm Turnbull to use the G20 in Hamburg this week to argue to keep trade open.
