'Puzzled' Panamanian officials scramble to make sense of Trump’s canal 'fixation'

17 January

After President Jimmy Carter's death at the age of 100 on December 29, 2024, President-elect Donald Trump argued that one of Carter's biggest mistakes was giving the Panama Canal to Panama back in 1977.

The Panama Canal, opened in 1914, is an artificially created waterway linking the Caribbean Sea with the Pacific Ocean. And it is now managed by the Panama Canal Authority, which is owned by the Panamanian government.

But Trump believes the Panama Canal should revert to full U.S. control.

CNN journalists Phil Mattingly and Andrew Seger, in an article published on January 17, stress that some Panamanian officials are puzzled by Trump's desire to retake the Panama Canal — as they thought the matter was settled long ago. And they are struggling to understand Trump's motivations.

Jorge Eduardo Ritter, Panama's former minister of foreign affairs, told CNN, "I don't like to disregard what President Trump says, because when he says something, he might not mean exactly what he is saying, but he is looking for something…. This fixation with Panama — I sense that something is going to happen. I don't think it's going to be a military invasion or he will take over the Canal, but something is going to happen."

According to Mattingly and Seger, one of the things current and past Panamanian officials find puzzling about Trump's interest in Panama is that he "paid little attention to the country in his first term."

Trump, they note, never nominated a U.S. ambassador to Panama during his first administration and instead, relied on a "holdover" from the Barack Obama years.

Ilya Espinosa de Marotta, the Panama Canal Authority's deputy administrator, told CNN, "Why now? Hong Kong has been here since '97. We’ve been running the canal for 25 years. We've been very transparent — you can know this is run 100 percent by Panamanians, so why now? It puzzles me."

Read the full CNN article at this link.

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