The day before, Hegseth China had accused a threatening influence on the Panama Canal, which is important for world trade. “The United States will neither allow communist China nor another country to threaten the operation or the integrity of the canal,” said Hegseth in a speech held on the channel on Tuesday. The Panama Canal is exposed to “continuing threats”.
China controls essential infrastructure in the area of the channel, said the Pentagon boss. This enables Beijing to exercise spy activities in the Central American country. That makes Panama and the USA “less safe, less successful and less confident”. Panama and the United States would “withdraw the Panama Canal with the influence of China” and open it to all countries. The “deterrent violence of the (…) deadliest combat troops in the world should be used,” added Hegseth with a view to the US forces.
In the past few months, US President Donald Trump had repeatedly threatened to take control of the channel once built by them and handed over to Panama in 1999. He criticized his Chinese influence on the waterway between the Atlantic and the Pacific, through which five percent of the world trade.
According to Hegseth’s speech on Tuesday, Beijing accused the US government “malignant attacks”. The cooperation between China and Panama is “soiled and undermined,” said the spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, Lin Jian. He accused the Trump government “urge-balancing” behavior. The relationship between Washington and Beijing, which was fallen into a low point by Trump’s aggressive customs policy, is additionally burdened by the tightened dispute over the Panama Canal.
The Chinese Embassy in Panama said: “China never took part in the management or operation of the Panama Canal.” Rather, Beijing always respected Panama’s sovereignty over the channel.
Hegseth visited the channel locks in Panama and met the President of the Central American country, José Raúl Mulino. Then both published a joint explanation – whereby there was a deviation between the Spanish and English version on one important point. In the version published by Mulino’s office, it was said that Hegseth Panama’s “inalienable sovereignty over the channel and the neighboring areas” recognized. This sentence was missing in the version spread by the US government.
In response to Trump’s threats, Panama has already made concessions in the past few weeks. It exerts increasing pressure on Hong Kong’s port operator Hutchison to withdraw from the canal. Hutchison runs ports on both ends of the canal.
On the day before Hegseth’s visit, the Panamaic government published the results of a review of the Hutchison subsidiary Panama Ports Company (PPC) responsible for the ports. According to this, the company is said to have been guilty of numerous contractual violations and not transferred $ 1.2 billion (just under 1.1 billion euros) that they should have paid.
PPC decisively rejected this on Wednesday. The allegations are “absolutely the opposite of reality”.
Hutchison announced in March to sell the ports for $ 19 billion (17 billion euros) to a consortium under the direction of the US investment company Blackrock. The Beijing, angered by this project, then announced a antitrust examination – which is presumably the reason why an agreement on the sale was not signed as originally planned on April 2.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio Panama had already visited in February. While Rubios visit had announced President Mulino that his country would no longer participate in the Chinese infrastructure program.
