On Thursday, the Treasury Department announced that the U.S. was imposing economic sanctions on two Chinese companies that had shipped goods to North Korea, in an effort to enforce existing sanctions on the Hermit Kingdom. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin described the move as a commitment “to achieving the final, fully verified denuclearization of North Korea,” while National Security Adviser John Bolton applauded the move on Twitter as “important actions” necessary to combat the country’s attempts to evade already-stringent sanctions by illicitly engaging in trade with China. “Everyone should take notice and review their own activities to ensure they are not involved in North Korea’s sanctions evasion,” Bolton warned.

And then 24 hours later, apparently in a fit of pique, Trump announced his decision, via tweet, to reverse course. “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. I have today ordered the withdrawal of those additional Sanctions!” he wrote.

The statement sent foreign-policy analysts, and presumably his own administration, into a tailspin. For one thing, there hadn’t been any new sanctions placed on North Korea; companies that had violated the sanctions had merely been penalized. There was some confusion over whether Trump was referring to the newly enacted sanctions against Venezuela and Iran, which were also announced Thursday. But in a statement, press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders confirmed that Trump’s tweet was intended as a favor to North Korea, meant to push Kim to renegotiate. “President Trump likes Chairman Kim, and he doesn’t think these sanctions will be necessary,” she said.

There was also some confusion about why Trump had directly contradicted his own administration officials in such a highly public fashion. As Daily Beast national security reporter Erin Banco pointed out, Mnuchin likely went through a lengthy process to get the sanctions approved, shuttling the proposal between the Office of Foreign Assets Control and Treasury experts, the State Department, various intelligence agencies, and the White House itself. “So either the President wasn’t fully informed on the sanctions which l doubt . . . or something happened in the last 24 hours that legitimately changed his mind,” she posited. “Either way something went awry here and Treasury staffers aren’t going to be too happy today.” According to NBC’s Josh Lederman, the rollout had been planned for quite some time, with top officials from the National Security Council walking reporters through the new sanctions to emphasize their importance in pushing North Korea to denuclearize.

Trump, of course, is infamous for announcing foreign-policy positions on Twitter, oftentimes to the apparent confusion of his own aides. His baffling about-face on Friday came the day after he abruptly tweeted that the U.S. now recognizes Israel’s control of the Syrian-held Golan Heights, upending decades of foreign policy and outraging Syria, Russia, and Iran, all in one tweet. By all indications, none of these decisions were made with any prior consideration from federal agencies. “There is not even the pretense of a national security process,” Richard Haass, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, wrote on Twitter. “Hard to imagine what would occur if there were a real crisis.”

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