North Korea Rails Against New Sanctions. Whether They Will Work Is Unclear.

The Trump administration has hailed the latest United Nations sanctions against nuclear-armed North Korea as the most severe yet, and the North’s fury over the penalties suggested they carried some sting.

In a staccato of outraged reactions on Monday to the sanctions imposed over the weekend, North Korea threatened retaliation against the United States “thousands of times” over, vowed to never give up its nuclear arsenal and called the penalties a panicky response by an American bully.

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“The number cited by the Trump administration assumes China and Russia will implement the resolution,” said Anthony Ruggiero, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington-based research group, referring to the $1 billion that the sanctions could slash from North Korea’s export revenue. “Eleven years of United Nations sanctions resolutions prove they will not.”

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Another consideration for the administration: Mr. Trump’s daughter Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, are scheduled to visit China next month. The Chinese foreign minister, Wang Yi, said this weekend that China was preparing to welcome Mr. Trump before the end of the year. It was unlikely that Washington would want to sour relations before the visits by imposing the secondary sanctions.

This means the Chinese companies that give the North access to American dollars and other currencies would be essentially free to continue their business unabated, Mr. Ruggiero said.

“The U.S. will give China and Russia time to implement the resolution while Chinese companies, individuals and banks facilitate Pyongyang’s sanctions evasion,” he said.

Chinese banks and enterprises are critical to North Korea’s access to foreign exchange, Mr. Ruggiero said. Since 2009, North Korea has used Chinese entities to process at least $2.2 billion in transactions through the United States financial system, Mr. Ruggiero said in congressional testimony last month.

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The United Nations “just locked in North Korea receiving at least $500 million a year for the practice” of sending laborers abroad, Mr. Ruggiero said.

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