U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson issues a formal statement in response to the ICBM missile test conducted by North Korea:

The United States strongly condemns North Korea’s launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile. Testing an ICBM represents a new escalation of the threat to the United States, our allies and partners, the region, and the world.

Global action is required to stop a global threat. Any country that hosts North Korean guest workers, provides any economic or military benefits, or fails to fully implement UN Security Council resolutions is aiding and abetting a dangerous regime.

All nations should publicly demonstrate to North Korea that there are consequences to their pursuit of nuclear weapons. We intend to bring North Korea’s provocative action before the UN Security Council and enact stronger measures to hold the DPRK accountable.

The United States seeks only the peaceful denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and the end of threatening actions by North Korea. As we, along with others, have made clear, we will never accept a nuclear-armed North Korea.

The President and his national security team are continuing to assess the situation in close coordination with our allies and partners.

~ Secretary of State Rex Tillerson

President Trump is smartly setting up the real adversary and it is not North Korea, it’s China.

To understand the longer and larger strategy, we must first remember the underpinning of all leverage, economics.

The true economic adversary to the United States is China.

President Trump and Secretary Tillerson are establishing who supports North Korea by defining who enables them.  Once the enabler is defined and in the sunlight, then action against the enabler is justified.

In the final analysis, China will either take action to remove the North Korean threat, or the United States will collapse the economy of China with the biggest set of economic actions against China in the history of economic sanctions.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley will establish and highlight the action of the enablers.

U.S. Ambassador to China Terry Branstad will politely request China to stop enabling and take action.

President Trump will politely ask Xi Jinping not to put him in a position of destroying the Chinese economy.  Trump will remind Xi Jinping he really doesn’t want to, but he is being left no option.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, and Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue are the atomic economic sledgehammer…. awaiting orders.

President Trump works the entire plan down to it’s two logical outcomes for the world to decide. Either:

A.) War with North Korea killing millions of people.

OR

B.) Economic Sanctions against China to avoid war.

President Xi Jinping can already see this is the binary choice at the logical end of the current path.  He too knows the art of economic war.

Xi can see this coming hence he will work veraciously to avoid being in that binary economic box.

One of China’s approaches will be an attempt to curry favor with all economic adversaries; China needs friends and will attempt to buy them if possible.  However, the U.S. economic market is worth $20 trillion and is the strongest economic leverage on the planet.

Economic isolation does not hurt the U.S. as much as economic isolation hurts all other industrial nations that rely on their ability to bring their products to U.S. markets.  The U.S. holds all economic leverage.  Remember, at its core – the U.S. is self sufficient in every industry.

China holds dollars.  China also hordes dollars as part of: a.) their trade surplus with the U.S. paying in dollars; and b.) their economic strategy to keep the U.S. dollar inflated.  China cannot dump dollars in retaliation without punishing their own economy.

If you owe the bank a million dollars the bank owns you.  If you owe the bank a trillion dollars, you own the bank.

China is screwed.

For three decades everyone in Donald Trump’s financial orbit, the “killers” per se’, have been chomping at the bit to crush China and cut them down to size.

U.S. Billionaire Donald Trump is now the President of the United States.  U.S. Billionaire Steven Mnuchin is now the master of all international finance.   U.S. Billionaire Wilbur Ross and Robert Lighthizer control trade.

North Korea is a regional problem, but North Korea is also an American opportunity.

North Korea’s behavior is giving President Trump every excuse to crush China economically; and yet no-one yet realizes what the long strategy is…

When all options are exhausted and this question remains, China will become the visible enemy enabler that must be confronted to avoid war.

That, my friends, is leverage.

That is also, why Trump has needed to speak so warmly about China.

China has always been the target.

Sun Tzu

“Let your plans be dark and impenetrable as night, and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt.”

~Sun Tzu

Or, put another way:

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/380922018717515776

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