Donald Trump made foreign policy by tweet again on Friday, and the White House isn’t even trying to cover up his reasons. “It was announced today by the U.S. Treasury that additional large scale Sanctions would be added to those already existing Sanctions on North Korea,” Trump tweeted. “I have today ordered the withdrawal of those additional Sanctions!”
This was confusing because 1) the new sanctions came on Thursday, not Friday, against two Chinese shipping companies that the U.S. says have been helping North Korea evade existing sanctions, and 2) emphasis on the existing sanctions part. This wasn’t a new policy; it was an application of one already in place.
So why did Trump make this move, undercutting economic pressure on North Korea? Well, according to White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, “President Trump likes Chairman Kim, and he doesn’t think these sanctions will be necessary.” You’d say it’s like the public announcement of a middle-school crush, except Trump already said of Kim that “we fell in love.”
This is foreign policy by personal relationship, conducted by someone who is most interested in having personal relationships with dictators.