Why Trump sees a Chinese threat at the Panama Canal, and locals don’t
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. President-elect Donald Trump’s reasons for wanting control of the Panama Canal can be found at either end of the interoceanic waterway. Every day, dozens of cargo ships pass by blue cranes at a port near the Pacific Ocean entrance, the towering skyline of Panama City visible across the horizon.
About eight hours later, they drift past another terminal stacked with containers as they exit into the Atlantic. These facilities are run by a giant Hong Kong port operator, Hutchison Whampoa. And that is the crux of the problem for the incoming Trump administration, which sees the Chinese infrastructure that has been built up around the canal in the past three decades as a national-security threat.
“In reality, a foreign power today possesses through their companies, which we know are not independent, the ability to turn the canal into a chokepoint in a moment of conflict," Sen. Marco Rubio, the nominee for secretary of state, said at his confirmation hearing. There are other China-backed projects in Panama that include a canal bridge, a new subway line, a cruise-ship terminal, a convention center and a wind-energy farm.
Incoming Trump administration officials say it all amounts to a violation of the U.S.-Panama treaties that required the canal to remain neutral when Washington turned over the American-built canal to Panama in 1999. Trump hasn’t ruled out using military force to take the canal back. Panamanian officials, and several former U.S.
military officials, say those Chinese facilities don’t represent a military threat, breach the canal’s neutrality or even show that Panama is coming under Beijing’s influence. This tiny Central American country loves baseball, uses the U.S. dollar as
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