Donald Trump has spent the transition before his second term making some outrageous provocations related to American seizures of foreign land. First, he implied that he would like for Canada to become part of the United States (naturally, with hockey legend Wayne Gretzky as “governor.”) Later, after revisiting his first term idea of America buying Greenland, he mused about the U.S. recapturing the Panama Canal.
The U.S. took over management of the Panama Canal project in 1904, completing it a decade later. In 1977, President Jimmy Carter agreed to a treaty that would hand control of the canal over to Panama in the future, a process that was completed in 1999. Ronald Reagan made the canal handoff an issue in the 1980 presidential election, but it mostly hasn’t been an issue in American politics since.
Eric Trump, son of President Trump, posted an image where his father buys, among other places, the Panama Canal to annex to the United States. pic.twitter.com/twjdxivA7E
— Crazy Ass Moments in LatAm Politics (@AssLatam) December 24, 2024
That is, until Trump gave a speech to Turning Point USA last week, in which he criticized the fees that Panama charges shipping companies to pass through the canal.
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“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 the United States of America, in full, quickly and without question,” Trump said in the speech, as reported by ABC News.
The president of Panama, meanwhile, has made it clear that the canal is “not for sale.”
“As president, I want to express clearly that every square meter of the Panama Canal and its adjacent zone belongs to Panama, and will continue to do so,” Panamanian President José Raúl Mulin said in video statement last week. “The sovereignty and independence of our country are not negotiable.”
One diplomat said this week that a takeover of the Panama Canal would require a war.
Former U.S. ambassador to Panama John Feeley, who served under both the Obama and Trump presidencies, said on CNN this week that “to attempt to take it back today, I’d like to ask you, go find the MAGA constituency that’s going to support another foreign war because that is what it would take to get the canal back.”
A former U.S. ambassador to Panama, John Feeley, said in an interview that a war would likely be the only means for the United States to retake the Panama Canalhttps://t.co/Rcgtmsx1er
— The Daily Beast (@thedailybeast) December 30, 2024
Feeley added that transferring the canal to Panama had bipartisan support in the 1970s.
“Let’s not forget, Jimmy Carter wasn’t the only one who thought it was a good idea,” Feeley said on CNN. “No one less than Henry Kissinger in 1975 told then-President Nixon: ‘If we don’t return this canal, we’re going to lose in every international forum, and we’re going to have riots all over Latin America.‘”
The U.S. did invade Panama, in 1989, in order to depose the country’s then-leader, Manuel Noriega, in order to arrest him for drug trafficking. But that dispute had nothing, at least directly, to do with the canal.
Trump has a long history with Panama, including a controversial hotel project that led to lawsuits, and Trump eventually losing control of it.
Photo courtesy of the Political Tribune media library.
