Panama caved on the canal after Trump channeled Teddy Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan
Teddy Roosevelt would presumably be pleased. President Trump spoke loudly and swung a big stick in Panama’s direction, and it produced instantaneous results on Sunday when Secretary of State Marco Rubio visited the small Central American nation. President Jose Raul Mulino Quintero said that Panama won’t renew its participation in China’s Belt and Road Initiative, Beijing’s global influence operation, and may terminate the relationship early.He said Panama will review its arrangement with a Hong Kong-based company to operate ports on either end of the canal.And he reportedly offered US Navy ships an exemption from canal transit fees.
Mulino also threw in a concession regarding the repatriation of migrants using the Darien Gap, the jungle straddling Panama and Colombia, on their way to our Southern border.Not bad for a day’s work.At this early juncture, Marco Rubio has the easiest job in the world.Fear of his boss, who is determined to throw his weight around in our hemisphere in a way we haven’t seen from a US president in 100 years or so, is opening up doors. The Panamanian political leadership presumably hasn’t been sleeping so well the last several weeks.After the election, Trump began banging the drum about Panama’s mismanagement of the canal.Then, in a truly extraordinary line in his inaugural address that didn’t get much attention given the rush of other events, he pledged to take it back. Would Trump really engage in an act of war that would have far-reaching consequences impossible to predict?Well, who in Panama wants to find out? Panama had signed up to Belt and Road in 2017, right around the time it dumped diplomatic relations with Taiwan to please China, and Beijing’s presence increased accordingly.According to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, “Chinese companies have been heavily involved in infrastructure-related contracts in and around the canal in Panama’s logistics, electricity, and construction secto...