Trump should stop issuing irresponsible trade threats

After the Democratic People's Republic of Korea claimed to have tested a hydrogen bomb on Sunday, US President Donald Trump posted several tweets, including one declaring: "The United States is considering, in addition to other options, stopping all trade with any country doing business with North Korea."

If taken literally, Trump threatens to sever trade ties with not only China, which accounts for most of DPRK's foreign trade, but also with India, Germany, France, Russia, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, the Philippines, Thailand and dozens of other countries that trade with the DPRK.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average, the S&P 500 and Nasdaq all fell on Tuesday, by about 1 percent, on the first day of trading after the US Labor Day holiday. Part of the fall was attributed to the tensions on the Korean Peninsula. But if Wall Street had taken Trump's tweet seriously, the market would probably have crashed due to a looming trade war between the world's two largest economies.