NEW YORK _ President Donald Trump on Thursday announced plans for new sanctions against North Korea as he struggles to find ways to confront the country's nuclear buildup.
After threatening earlier this week to completely destroy North Korea if it uses its nuclear weaponry against U.S. territory or allies, Trump told reporters he was issuing a new executive order adding more sanctions to those that the United States and allies already have imposed.
He said the measures would target North Korea's textiles, fishing industry and shipping. In fact, sanctions against those industries are already in place, so it was not clear what was different about the additional ones.
"Do business with the United States ... or the lawless regime" of North Korea, he said.
"We seek ... a complete denuclearization of North Korea," the president said. Many observers call that standard an all but impossible one, given Pyongyang's progress to date.
Trump, on the margins of the annual United Nations General Assembly, was meeting Thursday with the presidents of Japan and South Korea, the two neighbors of North Korea with the most at stake in the showdown.
Already, the U.S. and the U.N. have imposed tough economic sanctions against North Korea that eat away at its export income, imports and revenue from workers its sends overseas. But none of those measures has curbed efforts by North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to develop inter-continental missiles capable of delivering a nuclear weapon to the United States.
