President-elect Donald Trump isn’t back in the Oval Office yet, but he’s wasting no time publishing big ideas and holding foreign countries accountable to their commitments.
Trump made big news last week when he threatened to take back the Panama Canal, a move met with grumbling and a response from the Panamanian government.
“We’re being ripped off at the Panama Canal like we’re being ripped off everywhere else,” Trump said during recent remarks in Arizona. “We will never, never let it fall into the wrong hands.”
“The Panama Canal is considered a vital National Asset for the United States, due to its critical role to America’s Economy and National Security. If the principles, both moral and legal, of this magnanimous gesture of giving are not followed, then we will demand that the Panama Canal be returned to us, in full, and without question,” Trump continued. “To the Officials of Panama, please be guided accordingly!”
"Every square metre of the canal belongs to Panama and will continue to belong [to Panama],” President José Raúl Mulino released in a video statement on X. "It's not for sale."
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But Trump never asked if the canal was for sale and history shows us it was the United States military that build the canal and the American taxpayer who footed the bill.
“The U.S. Army played a critical role in the development of the canal. By the time the work was done and the first ship had transited the canal in 1914, the project had not only become the most expensive public work ever built, it had also set the bar for a new epoch in the advance of technology and medical discovery that was just beginning. Even more, completion of the canal put the world on notice that it now had to reckon with the United States as a global power,” the Center of Military History states.
Further, prior to the U.S. handing over management of the canal the two countries signed a pair of treaties. One of them gave the U.S. the right to use military force to reestablish neutrality in the canal if it ever were to be threatened.
“The Treaty Concerning the Permanent Neutrality and Operation of the Panama Canal, or the Neutrality Treaty, stated that the United States could use its military to defend the Panama Canal against any threat to its neutrality, thus allowing perpetual U.S. usage of the Canal,” the State Department says.
Now that the Chinese Communist Party has embedded itself in the ports and companies running the canal, where ships are being charged exorbitant fees, Trump has a right to invoke the terms of the treaty.
“Chinese companies have been heavily involved in infrastructure-related contracts in and around the Canal in Panama’s logistics, electricity, and construction sectors…China’s BRI [Belt and Road] expansion into port-related facilities has stirred alarm for the United States over ambitions seen as endangering the neutrality of the Canal,” the Center for Strategic and International Studies explains. “Of those goods transiting the Canal, over 60 percent originate in or end up in U.S. markets, intrinsically tying free and fair Canal access to U.S. national security and economic interests in the country.”
“With the expansion of Chinese influence in the waterway, the Canal will likely continue to be a point of tension in U.S.-China relations. China does not operate the Canal, it only manages the two ports on either end, meaning it does not interact or influence all goods transiting the Canal. However, the increase of Chinese companies’ control over transshipment cargo operations bound for the United States and other countries is a point of contention,” CIS continues.
The Chinese aren’t interested in neutrality, they’re interested in control and global domination. Trump is correct in his efforts to hold the Panamanian government accountable to a treaty they agreed to and is rightfully paying attention to the crucial waterway in order to protect American interests.
