We’re getting tired of all the dealmaking. It’s been happening all over the hemisphere for the last 24 hours, from Panama to Canada.
In his inaugural address, President Trump said we’re going to take the Panama Canal back. Panama clearly took notice. Two weeks later, it has agreed to end a development deal it had struck with China as part of that power’s global Belt and Road Initiative.
President Trump brought not only rhetorical pressure on Panama with his vows to take it back, but also got congressional Republicans on board to draft the Panama Canal Repurchase Act, which was introduced by Representative Dusty Johnson (R., S.D.).
The strategic and economic importance of the canal is not in doubt. After meeting with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, José Raúl Mulino, Panama’s president, declared an era of new cooperation. “I think this visit opens the door to build new relations . . . and try to increase as much as possible U.S. investments in Panama,” he said. Rubio added that the U.S. and Panama also made progress in talks about preventing migration northward through Panama to the United States. China’s ambassador to Panama, Xu Xueyuan, said that the United States had stirred up a “tropical storm” that disrupted Panama’s sovereignty, sounding — for good reason — like a country that is starting to get serious resistance to its play for influence in our hemisphere.
Trump is absolutely correct to identify the Panama Canal as a vital interest of the United States. Nearly 72 percent of all vessels that travel through the Panama Canal are coming from or going to a U.S. port, the State Department estimates.
Trump’s pushback against overweening Chinese influence in the canal is a welcome revival and application of the Monroe Doctrine, formulated by James Monroe and John Quincy Adams, which seeks to keep the Western Hemisphere free from imperial powers outside it. The “Roosevelt Corollary” was that the U.S. may use military force to eject these powers. But Donald Trump’s approach in this case so far has been the opposite of Roosevelt’s. Trump bellows loudly, without any resort to the big stick.
Panama was the first Latin American country to join the Belt and Road Initiative. And it is the first to leave. This sets a pattern that other Latin American nations should be led to follow.