Panama is violating its Canal Treaty by cozying up to China risking US safety

“Welcome to the United States Canal!” the once and future President Donald Trump posted on Truth Social Sunday, along with a photo of an American flag proudly fluttering over a narrow body of water.Earlier in the day, Trump had told a crowd at Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest rally that he would never allow the Panama Canal, a strategic waterway built by the United States over a century ago to connect the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, to fall into the “wrong hands.”Trump made an economic argument along with his geopolitical one: “We’re being ripped off at the Panama Canal like we’re being ripped off everywhere else,” he told the audience as he denounced the increased fees billed to American shippers by the canal’s operators.The waterway, originally an American possession, was given to Panama by President Jimmy Carter in two 1977 treaties that barely passed the two-thirds Senate majorities necessary for ratification.The first treaty obliged Panama to operate the canal neutrally, with nondiscriminatory pricing, and allowed the United States to defend it from any threat that might interfere with its neutrality.The second treaty transferred full control to Panama effective on Dec.31, 1999, without superseding the first treaty’s broad provision allowing for US defense of this crucial military and economic asset.Yet despite the assurances in these agreements, the sad truth is the Panama Canal is already in the “wrong hands”: China’s.In 1996, Panama made a 25-year agreement to outsource management of the canal’s two entry ports — Cristóbal on the Atlantic side and Balboa on the Pacific — to a subsidiary of Hutchison Whampoa, a Hong Kong-based shipping firm.Technically, the deal seemed to violate the 1977 Panama-US treaties, which guaranteed Panamanian operational control and local security for the canal as well as ownership.At that time, however, Hong Kong was still a British colony — and both Congress and the US Federal Maritime Commiss...