'If we were to happen to go to war with China': Tuberville backs Trump on Panama Canal

07 January

U.S. Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-AL), ignoring his home state’s aerospace and defense industries that manufacture military aircraft components and ships, is siding with President-elect Donald Trump’s threat to take back the Panama Canal from Panama, by claiming America needs the canal to defend Taiwan against China.

“We’ve got to take the Panama Canal back,” Tuberville told Fox Business on Tuesday (video below), hours after Trump spoke. “We’ve got to do something because if we were to happen to go to war with uh China over Taiwan and they were to shut the Panama Canal down, we’d have to go eight to ten-thousand miles longer just to get things back uh, to the to the war zone if we had to go from the east coast to China.”

China does not control the Panama Canal, contrary to Trump’s claim and Tuberville’s suggestion.

During his rambling and wide-ranging press conference, Trump had said he would not rule out taking control back of the Panama Canal by military force.

“It might be that you’ll have to do something,” Trump told reporters, claiming the U.S. needs the canal “for economic security — the Panama Canal was built for our military.”

“Uh, look, the Panama Canal is vital to our country. It’s being operated by China,” Trump falsely declared. “China, and we gave the Panama Canal to Panama. We didn’t give it to China.”

If China attacked Taiwan, and if the United States decided to get involved — as President Joe Biden has vowed — contrary to Senator Tuberville’s expressed concerns, the U.S. military has planes it could fly to the area, planes manufactured and maintained in part from components made in Alabama.

There’s also the Pacific Fleet, which, according to the U.S. Navy, “remains the world’s largest naval command, extending from the West Coast of the United States, into the Indian Ocean, encompassing three oceans, six continents, and more than half the Earth’s surface.”

Senator Tuberville, who has repeatedly attacked the U.S. military, ignored that his home state is home to the military industry’s “Big Ten,” according to Business Alabama. The Alabama Department of Commerce has an entire website devoted to aerospace and aviation that is “Made in Alabama.”

In 2023, Tuberville was accused of “putting our national security at risk” by the heads of the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Space Force in rare public remarks.

Watch Tuberville’s remarks below or at this link.

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