Trump-Kim reach no agreement at Hanoi summit

U.S. President Donald Trump said Thursday he cut short his nuclear summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un because the two sides could not agree on sanctions.

“No agreement was reached at this time, but their respective teams look forward to meeting in the future,” White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said in a statement.

"It wasn't a good thing to be signing anything," Trump said during a post-summit news conference. "We had some options, and at this time we decided not to do any of the options."

The president said he had not committed to a third summit with Kim. Still, Trump described the talks as productive, and highlighted his relationship with his North Korean counterpart — "I think we'll end up being very good friends."

At the end of the day, though, Trump said he "would not have been happy about" any deal he saw on the table for Thursday's talks.

"Basically, they wanted the sanctions lifted in their entirety and we couldn't do that," Trump said. "They were willing to de-nuke a large portion of the areas that we wanted, but we couldn't give up all of the sanctions for that. So we continue to work and we'll see, but we had to walk away from that particular suggestion. We had to walk away from that."

Trump claimed Kim offered to close down one weapons facility in exchange for the complete removal of sanctions, but that the U.S. team "brought many points up that they were surprised that we knew" and so demanded more actions from Kim's regime.

The president confirmed that all the current sanctions on Pyongyang will remain in place.

American Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said during the news conference that the U.S. team had tried to lay the groundwork before the summit for an agreement, but Thursday's talks did not seal the deal.

"Unfortunately, we didn't get all the way. We didn't get to something that ultimately made sense for the United States of America," Pompeo said. "I think Chairman Kim was hopeful that we would. We asked him to do more and he was unprepared to do that."

Trump said, "one of the first calls" he planned to make after the press conference would be to South Korean President Moon Jae-in, to discuss the events of the summit.

The meeting in Hanoi, Vietnam ended significantly earlier than had originally been scheduled, and the leaders did not even stick around for a pre-planned lunch. The White House indicated there had been no new agreements reached during the summit.