New Secretary of State in the US, Marco Rubio Headed to Panama

Some people have thought that Trump’s talk about the Panama Canal was just talk. They were wrong. Newly confirmed Secretary of State Marco Rubio is already planning his first international trip – to Panama. Why do you suppose he is going there? Could it be because the new Trump administration is serious about the United States retaking control of the canal? It sure looks that way. Panama is the country whose canal President Donald Trump has suggested he’d seize — as early as next week, according to three U.S. officials briefed on the plan. The art of the deal is what we really expect to happen, beginning with Marco Rubio’s visit.

The Rubio trip — scheduled to run from late January to early February — also includes Guatemala, El Salvador, Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic, the officials said. The trip is expected to be Rubio’s first foreign travel as secretary of State, said one former official who was also briefed on the plan. All were granted anonymity as they weren’t authorized to discuss travel plans publicly. All of the individuals also stressed that the travel plans are tentative. Rubio is expected to use the travel to cover at least two issues at the top of MAGA foreign policy agenda: curtailing illegal migration and Trump’s push to reclaim the Panama Canal, according to one of the current officials and the former official. They are wasting no time.
Does China Control the Panama Canal, as Trump Claims?
The canal was administered by America until 1977, when treaties were signed under then-US president Jimmy Carter for its handover to Panama. The Panama Canal is crucial for trade as it connects the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. US President Donald Trump’s threat to seize the Panama Canal over alleged undue Chinese influence may really be aimed at limiting Beijing’s growing diplomatic and economic presence in Latin America, experts say. Actually using force to take the interoceanic waterway, which carries five percent of world maritime trade and 40 percent of US container traffic, seems an unlikely endeavor, they concur.
Who owns the canal?
Constructed by the United States mainly with Afro-Caribbean labor and opened in 1914, the canal was administered by America until 1977, when treaties were signed under then-US president Jimmy Carter for its handover to Panama. Since the handover in 1999, the canal has been managed by the Panama Canal Authority (ACP) — an autonomous entity whose board of directors is appointed by the legislature and president of Panama. The government has granted concessions to private company Hutchinson Ports — a subsidiary of Hong Kong-based conglomerate CK Hutchison Holdings — to operate ports on either extreme of the 82-kilometer (51-mile) waterway. According to Rebecca Bill Chavez of the Inter-American Dialogue think tank, “Panama has honored the canal treaties by maintaining the canal’s operations efficiently and ensuring its neutrality.” Yet Trump, in his inaugural address Monday, complained that “China is operating the Panama Canal, and we didn’t give it to China, we gave it to Panama.” “China does not operate or control the Panama Canal,” said Chavez.
Could this change?
In the eye of the storm is Hutchinson Ports, which has operated the Balboa and Cristobal ports since 1997. Trump’s Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, has questioned whether Chinese companies could take control of the ports under orders of Beijing and “shut it down or impede our transit.” Panama’s President Jose Raul Mulino has insisted his country operates the canal on a principle of neutrality, as per the treaties. “There are reasonable concerns related to the presence of a Chinese company,” Benjamin Gedan, director of the Washington-based Wilson Center’s Latin America program, told AFP. “The channel is of enormous value to the United States, both commercially and strategically,” Gedan said, adding it is a potential target were China to exert influence over Hutchinson Ports, or even nationalize it.

Beijing said Wednesday it has “never interfered” and “does not participate in the management and operation” of the canal, of which the United States is the biggest user, followed by China. Hutchinson Ports said audits a few years ago by the office of the comptroller, which oversees public spending, and the Panama Maritime Authority, found the company was in “full compliance” with its contractual obligations. The comptroller has announced another audit since Trump’s threats.
The art of the deal?
Trump has complained that American ships — including US Navy vessels — are “severely overcharged” for using the port. But for Euclides Tapia, professor of international relations at the University of Panama, this appears to be “a false argument” to conceal Trump’s real goal: “for Panama to reduce its relations with China to a minimum.” Panama broke diplomatic ties with Taiwan in favor of Beijing in 2017, much to Washington’s dismay. Since then, China’s footprint has expanded greatly in Panama as in the rest of Latin America, mainly through infrastructure projects. The United States remains Panama’s main political and commercial partner, but subsidiaries of Chinese companies have in recent years built a $206-million port at the Pacific entrance to the canal, and are spending some $1.4 billion on a bridge over it. “He (Trump) is definitely trying to frighten Panama,” said University of Essex international relations expert Natasha Lindstaedt. She added that “this is a negotiation tool or a distraction, or both.”
Is force likely?
Under the 1977 treaties, Panama committed to ensuring the canal is open to all countries equally. Nothing “mentions, let alone authorizes, the United States recovering or reclaiming the canal,” said Julio Yao, a former government policy advisor who was part of the Panamanian team that negotiated the treaties. According to Tapia, the international relations professor, Washington introduced amendments to the treaties that allow for unilateral US military force to defend the canal against threat of closure. “Only the fabrication of a false flag operation… could justify the use of military force in Panama” under existing conditions, said Tapia. And that could only happen “to keep the channel open, not to take it and exploit it economically,” the analyst added. The Wilson Center’s Gedan sees a military intervention as “unlikely,” but noted Trump could put pressure on Panama through tariffs, for example.
Saudi Crown Prince tells Trump, the Kingdom intends to invest $600 Billion in the US
Saudi Arabia’s crown prince said Thursday the kingdom wants to invest $600 billion in the United States over the next four years, comments that came after President Donald Trump earlier put a price tag on returning to the kingdom as his first foreign trip. Trump’s 2017 trip to Saudi Arabia upended a tradition of U.S. presidents first heading to the United Kingdom as their first trip abroad. It also underscored his administration’s close ties to the rulers of the oil-rich Gulf states as his eponymous real estate company has pursued deals across the region as well. The comments from Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, reported early Thursday by the state-run Saudi Press Agency, came in a phone call with Trump. “The crown prince affirmed the kingdom’s intention to broaden its investments and trade with the United States over the next four years, in the amount of $600 billion, and potentially beyond that,” the report said.
The readout did not elaborate on where those investments and trade could be placed. The U.S. in recent years has increasingly pulled away from relying on Saudi oil exports, which once was the bedrock of their relationship for decades. Saudi sovereign wealth funds have taken large stakes in American businesses while also looking at sports as well. Saudi Arabia does, however, rely predominantly on U.S.-made weapons and defense systems, which could be a part of the investment. There was no immediate readout from the White House on the call. It also wasn’t immediately clear if Trump’s call with the crown prince was his first with a foreign leader since re-entering the White House. However, it was the first reported abroad.
The crown prince, the de facto ruler of the oil-rich kingdom, also spoke with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio early Thursday. On Monday after his inauguration, Trump talked about possibly heading to the kingdom again as his first foreign trip, like he did in 2017. “The first foreign trip typically has been with the U.K. but … I did it with Saudi Arabia last time because they agreed to buy $450 billion worth of our products,” Trump told journalists in the Oval Office. “If Saudi Arabia wanted to buy another $450 billion or $500 — we’ll up it for all the inflation — I think I’d probably go.” The 2017 visit to the kingdom set in motion a year’s long boycott of Qatar by four Arab nations, including the kingdom. Trump maintained close relations with Saudi Arabia, even after Prince Mohammed was implicated in the 2018 killing and dismemberment of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul.
The kingdom also had been talking for years with the Biden administration about a wider deal to diplomatically recognize Israel in exchange for U.S. defense protections and other support. The $600 billion pledge, which dwarves the gross domestic product of many nations, also comes as the kingdom faces budgetary pressures of its own. Global oil prices remain depressed years after the height of the coronavirus pandemic, affecting the kingdom’s revenues. Meanwhile, Prince Mohammed also wants to continue his $500 billion project at NEOM, a new city in Saudi Arabia’s western desert on the Red Sea. It also will need to build tens of billions of dollars’ worth of new stadiums and infrastructure ahead of it hosting the 2034 FIFA World Cup.