Trump threatens to take control of Panama Canal, staple of global economy
“We’re being ripped off at the Panama Canal like we’re being ripped off everywhere else,” Trump said at a conservative conference in Phoenix on Sunday, demanding the return of the state-run canal to the U.S. “We will never, never let it fall into the wrong hands.”
His comments drew an angry rebuke from Panamanian President José Raúl Mulino, who took office in July after campaigning on a platform to curb U.S.-bound migration through the country’s pristine tropical rainforests with support from the U.S. government. He rejected Trump’s threats as an affront to Panama’s sovereignty.
“Every square meter of the Panama Canal and its adjacent area belongs to Panama and will continue to be so,” Mulino responded in a televised address Sunday afternoon. “The sovereignty and independence of our country aren’t negotiable.”
“We’ll see about that!” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform later in the day. He added in another social-media post featuring an image of a waterway and an American flag, “Welcome to the United States Canal!”
Trump didn’t specify how he would take back control of the canal. His transition team didn’t respond to a request for additional comment.
Short of an invasion, as the U.S. carried out in 1989 to overthrow then-dictator Manuel Noriega, the U.S. government has no ability to restore control of the canal, which the U.S. built more than a century ago.
The U.S. gradually handed back control of the canal—as well as the U.S.-governed Panama Canal Zone, which ran through the middle of the country—as a result of a 1977 treaty signed by President Jimmy Carter. Panama gained full control of the canal in 2000.
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“Trump believes the U.S. gave away something for nothing,” said John Feeley, who resigned as U.S. ambassador to Panama during Trump’s first term. “For him, it’s yet another example of a country taking advantage of the U.S.”
Trump’s warning comes after he recently threatened to impose tariffs on imports from Mexico and Canada if the countries failed to secure their respective borders with the U.S. and curb drug trafficking and illegal migration. Trump went so far as to troll Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau by suggesting that Canada become the 51st state and calling him governor.
The 50-mile Panama Canal, through which about 4% of global trade passes, is crucial for the global economy and U.S. consumers. Chilean wines and Ecuadorean bananas are shipped to the U.S. East Coast through the canal, as is copper from Chile to Europe and liquefied natural and petroleum gas from one U.S. coast to the other.
Unlike Suez, a flat seawater canal whose stream flow is defined by the tide, the Panama Canal is a much more complex infrastructure. The Panama Canal relies on freshwater and uses a system of locks as aquatic elevators, lifting ships almost 90 feet above sea level onto a navigable waterway and then lowering them down the other end. The U.S. is the canal’s top user, followed by China.
Trump said the handover of the canal was solely for Panama to manage, “and not for China or any other country to manage.”
“You see what’s going on there—China,” Trump told supporters on Sunday.
China has replaced the U.S. as the dominant trading partner in Latin America. Seven of the 11 nations worldwide that maintain diplomatic relations with Taiwan, which Beijing considers as part of its territory, are in the region. Five that switched recognition to Beijing under Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s watch, including Honduras and Panama, were showered with Chinese deals.
After gaining control of the canal, Panama spent $5 billion in a project to build locks to accommodate larger ships. But the Panama waterway faces more serious long-term challenges that could disrupt global shipping. It had to adapt its operations in recent years, boosting prices, restricting traffic and draft because of diminishing rainwater needed to operate the waterway.
Canal authorities are working on a $2 billion plan to build infrastructure to manage and preserve freshwater reserves—an amount equal to the canal’s annual contributions to Panama’s government coffers.
Since the U.S. handover, there have been no complaints by users, Mulino said. “On the contrary, it has been a source of strong international support and national pride,” Mulino said in his video address. “These treaties also established the permanent neutrality of the canal.”
The decadeslong struggle for Panama to obtain control of the waterway and the canal zone has always been the focus of Panamanian nationalism.
In recent weeks, the canal’s administration aired television ads celebrating the waterway’s handover as a source of pride to the nation. On Jan. 9, Panama commemorates Martyr’s Day, which marks the death of more than 20 Panamanians killed in 1964 riots protesting U.S. control of the 10-mile-wide canal zone that bisected the country.
Feeley said Mulino’s strong comments had been aimed at his domestic audience. The Panamanian president should have just ignored Trump, he said. “A better Mulino response would have been silence,” Feeley said. “The best he can hope for now is that Trump will get distracted by something else on Monday morning.”
In neighboring Colombia, President Gustavo Petro said he will be on Panama’s side and in defense of its sovereignty ” until the very end.”
“If the new U.S. government wants to talk business, we will talk business, face to face, and for the benefit of our people, but dignity will never be negotiated,” Petro wrote on X.
Write to Santiago Pérez at [email protected], José de Córdoba at [email protected] and Alex Leary at [email protected]
