US President Donald Trump will convene his national security team today and weigh possibly drastic economic sanctions against North Korea after Pyongyang test-fired what it claimed was a hydrogen bomb able to fit atop a missile.

“The national security team is monitoring this closely,” said White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders. “The president and his national security team will have a meeting to discuss further later today.”

In a tweet today, Trump denounced the powerful test – said to be the North’s first blast to exceed in power the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Japan – as “very hostile and dangerous to the United States.”

Other world leaders joined in the denunciation. China and Russia sharply condemned it, South Korean President Moon Jae-In called for the “strongest punishment,” and Britain said China should step up economic pressure on the North.

In Washington, US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said he was preparing a package of economic sanctions to do that – measures “that would go as far as cutting off all trade and other business” with the North.

“I’m going to draft a sanctions package and send it to the president for his strong consideration so anybody (who) wants to do trade or business with them will be prevented from doing trade or business with us,” Mnuchin said on “Fox News Sunday.”

But he also said Trump had made it clear that “he will consider everything” and “look at all our options.”

While the United States has virtually no trade with the North, the burden of sanctions such as Mnuchin described would fall heavily on China. About 90% of North Korean exports go to China.

Early last month the United Nations Security Council adopted a seventh set of sanctions aimed at depriving the North of a billion dollars in income from exports. China approved the measures.

Trump has repeatedly insisted that Beijing lean on the neighboring Pyongyang regime to stop its nuclear and missile development.

But today he also aimed criticism at the government in Seoul, tweeting that the time for talks was over and that “appeasement” would not work. – AFP, September 3, 2017.