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PANAMA CITY — A black, massive Hong Kong-registered ship inched its way through the churning waters of the Panama Canal — guided by tugboats stern and aft, and sweating Panamanians hoisting yellow ropes to latch onto the ship’s higher levels.
The ship, named Zim Mount Blanc, carried some 17,000 rust-trimmed containers, blue, red and white, stacked seven- and eight-high. It barely skirted the sides of the channel, close enough, it seemed, to scrape its edges.
Each day dozens of Chinese, American, European and other ships traverse this 50-mile canal, which connects the Atlantic and Pacific oceans and was expanded about a decade ago to accommodate newer, more massive ships.
It has long been a vital route in international shipping, as well as being key to Panama’s economy.
And now President Trump wants to seize it.
Complaining about what he sees as dangerous Chinese influence over the water passage, Trump dispatched his secretary of State, Marco Rubio, long a specialist in Latin America, to reinforce the message this month on Rubio’s maiden voyage as a member of the new Cabinet.
“We didn’t give the canal to the Chinese. We gave it to Panama,” Rubio declared after he toured one section of the locks, or the multiple complex of “water elevators” that flow ships up over the middle of the Panamanian isthmus and then down again to sea level.
The Panamanian reception was angry. Through Rubio’s visit to Panama City, and before and after, demonstrators waved placards and chanted, “The canal is ours!”
“Trump and Rubio have managed to revive Panamanian nationalism,” said Edwin Cabrera, a Panamanian political analyst.
Rarely do Panamanians unite on political topics, Cabrera and other analysts said, but threats to the ownership of the canal go to the heart of national identity and erase ideological differences.
There is no question that China has made major economic and diplomatic inroads into Latin America. But in his inaugural address, Trump claimed that the canal and its port were being “controlled” or “run” by China, including “Chinese soldiers.”
Five companies operate the ports: two Chinese, one Taiwanese, one Singaporean and one U.S. The consortia that oversee shipping include companies from numerous other countries.
Trump is especially bitter that President Carter, in 1977, entered into agreement with Panama to relinquish control of the canal by the year 1999. It was built in 1914 by Black Caribbean workers and others, with thousands dying in the process.
In 2015, the canal complex underwent a $5.25-billion expansion to accommodate wider locks and mechanical, retractable gates that allowed passage of substantially larger ships with the capacity to carry about 2.5 times the number of containers transported by previous ships, according to canal officials.
Trump has said that U.S. troops could be used to “take back” the canal, awakening dark memories of when Americans invaded Panama in 1989. At the time, the U.S. still controlled the Canal Zone, but dictator Gen. Manuel Noriega, an erstwhile CIA operative and indicted drug trafficker, increasingly found himself in American crosshairs, including on the United States’ most-wanted list.
Hundreds of mostly Panamanians were killed — the exact numbers never clear — and the capital’s historic Casco Viejo largely destroyed. Noriega was captured.
Trump’s revival of some of that bellicose language especially inflames nerves in Panama, said political scientist Miguel Antonio Bernal. “The trauma of invasion still lives,” he said. “This is a word not yet healed.”
Panama is one of only three countries in the Western Hemisphere invaded by the U.S. in the last century, along with Haiti and Grenada.
“The canal is ours and always will be,” Bernal added.
To this day, Panamanians mark a national holiday annually that remembers the 1964 killing by U.S. troops and police of 21 Panamanians who wanted to raise the country’s flag in the then U.S.-controlled Canal Zone.
Many Panamanians question Trump’s motives on the canal, suggesting they may have to do with business pursuits or imperialistic expansionism, which has also seen Trump express interest in Greenland, Canada and even the Gaza Strip.
Some suggest Trump never forgave Panama for being one the first places where a Trump development was rebranded, in this case to Marriott.
Trump actually would have had a natural ally in Panama’s President José Raúl Mulino, a conservative, no-nonsense pro-U.S. politician. Mulino early on worked to reduce the migration flows through Panama’s Darien Gap and has been helping to facilitate immigration deportation flights from the U.S. to parts of Central and South America.
But the canal was another matter.
Mulino is “the kind of guy who should get on very well with Donald Trump, if Donald Trump hadn’t kicked sand in his face and threatened the existential asset that Panama has: the canal,” said John Feeley, a former U.S. ambassador to Panama.
After Rubio’s meeting with Mulino last week, the State Department announced Panama had agreed to exempt the U.S. Navy from the fees that every country in the world pays to traverse the canal.
Mulino quickly shot back, saying no such agreement had been reached, and the Trump administration was engaged in “lies and falsehoods.” He said he contacted U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth regarding the matter. A call with Trump was also hastily arranged.
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