Gardner’s sanctions bill aims to create leverage to force North Korea into diplomatic talks

U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner (R-CO) introduced a bill on Tuesday that aims to pressure North Korea to engage in diplomacy by ratcheting up financial sanctions, promoting human rights and democracy, and conducting congressional review of current diplomatic engagement efforts.

The Leverage to Enhance Effective Diplomacy Act of 2017 builds on legislation that Gardner introduced in July, the North Korea Enablers Accountability Act, to impose economic embargos on North Korea and those that enable or take part in North Korean labor trafficking.

To foster a diplomatic solution to North Korea’s escalating nuclear weapons program, the bill would tighten financial sanctions and reauthorize the North Korea Human Rights Act of 2004 for an additional five years. It would also require a comprehensive U.S. strategy to curb North Korea’s ballistic missile threat and congressional briefings on current diplomatic engagement with North Korea.

“The administration has taken positive steps in recent weeks to impose additional sanctions and working with governments to diplomatically isolate this heinous regime,” said Gardner, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on East Asia, the Pacific, and International Cybersecurity Policy.

Gardner introduced the bipartisan bill with subcommittee Ranking Member U.S. Sen. Edward Markey (D-MA).

“Senator Markey and I are going to continue working in a bipartisan manner to give nations and companies a clear choice: do business with the United States or do business with North Korea. This legislation will give the administration the needed additional tools to peacefully denuclearize the North Korean regime,” he added.

In terms of financial sanctions, the bill would require the president to block all transactions involving North Korean property, to bar entities that engage in significant trade from accessing the U.S. financial system and to draft a strategy to end North Korean labor trafficking.

Gardner, in a recent Ripon Forum interview, said the Trump Administration has taken some positive steps toward reining in North Korea’s nuclear program, but more work remains.

“They’ve accomplished what previous administrations were unable to do in getting nations that rarely see eye to eye on anything to come together at the United Nations to put in place needed sanctions against North Korea,” he said.

Gardner also praised the administration’s decision to impose sanctions on Chinese and Russian entities that had been aiding North Korea’s economy.

“While these were important moves, we need to do more – much more – in imposing penalties on all North Korean enablers, no matter where they are based,” Gardner told the Ripon Forum. “I have introduced legislation that would ban any entity that does business with North Korea or its enablers from using the United States financial system, and I will keep pushing for stronger actions that are part of our efforts to stop a war breaking out on the Korean Peninsula.”

In addition to requiring congressional review of North Korean policy, the Leverage to Enhance Effective Diplomacy Act would require a global strategy to isolate North Korea diplomatically and economically. To that end, U.S. relations could be downgraded with nations that fail to comply with the North Korea isolation strategy, and U.S. assistance to any country that doesn’t comply could be terminated.

“The United States is the most important and powerful democracy in the world,” Gardner said. “We are never going to stop advocating for our values across the world – that’s just one of the many things that makes this nation so special.”