Laura Rosenberger, a senior official in former President Barack Obama’s National Security Council, said: “What’s particularly troubling about Secretary Tillerson’s statement is that we’ve seen no sense from the Trump administration of what their policy and approach toward North Korea is, and this is particularly troubling for both the importance of reassuring our allies in the region as well as to ensure that North Korea understands the degree to which this raises serious concerns in the United States.”

Over the weekend, Trump vowed that he would go it alone to constrain the North’s nuclear drive, if Beijing fails to weigh in. Trump, a former real estate magnate, is still finding his footing in the White House and has yet to spell out a strategy for what his advisers called a trade relationship based on “the principle of reciprocity.”

He brought his top economic and national advisers to Florida for the meeting, including Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross. “Even as we share a desire to work together, the United States does recognize the challenges China can present to American interests,” said Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, also in Florida for the meeting. What worries the protocol-conscious Chinese more than policy clashes is the risk that the unpredictable Trump could publicly embarrass Xi, after several foreign leaders experienced awkward moments with the new U.S. president. “Ensuring President Xi does not lose face is a top priority for China,” a Chinese official said. "We have the legal tools and a lot of authorities that have not been exercised in the past to fight back and you now have the political will, from the president on down, to do that," the official said. Pyongyang yet again defied international warnings and launched a medium range ballistic missile into its eastern waters early Wednesday, in what appeared to be an effort to develop a nuclear-tipped missile that could strike the U.S. mainland. The United States has moved on and is now trying to resolve problem through a larger scale, such as the summit with China shows.”

While Trump and his top policymakers continue their tough talk on the North Korean issue, it’s unclear such rhetoric would be enough to effectively influence North Korea and China, Pyongyang’s only major ally. Trump consulted on Wednesday with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who said he and the president agreed by phone that North Korea’s latest ballistic missile launch was “a dangerous provocation and a serious threat.”

A White House strategy review is focusing on options for pressuring Pyongyang economically and militarily. Anthony Ruggiero, a North Korea expert in the use of targeted financial measures who spent more than 17 years in the U.S. government, said Trump’s North Korea policy could take a harder line than that of previous administrations by bringing broader “secondary sanctions on Chinese companies, banks and individuals that are complicit in North Korea’s sanctions evasion” using U.S. law. A long-standing option of pre-emptive strikes remains on the table, but despite the tougher recent U.S. talk, the internal review “de-emphasizes direct military action,” the U.S. official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. Analysts believe any military action would likely provoke severe North Korean retaliation and massive casualties in South Korea and Japan and among U.S. troops stationed there.
North Korea fires a medium-range ballistic missile about 60 kilometers (37 miles) into its eastern waters, in the direction of Japan according to United States and South Korean officials.