Marco Rubio Preps Panama Visit Amid Trump’s Escalating Canal Rhetoric
- Secretary of State Marco Rubio will visit Panama as part of his first foreign trip, which includes stops in various countries in Latin America and the Caribbean.
In the wake of President Donald Trump’s repeated insistence that the U.S. should take back the Panama Canal over unsubstantiated claims that China is operating the waterway, new Secretary of State Marco Rubio will visit Panama as part of his first foreign trip as the chief U.S. diplomat.
Rubio will depart for the trip next week as part of a visit to various countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, including Guatemala, El Salvador, Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic, according to the State Department.
More from Sourcing Journal
The wider tour will likely focus primarily on the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, which has been a leading part of the returning Commander in Chief’s platform. But the Panama visit will surely bring the canal conversation front and center.
Trump’s ongoing rhetoric regarding Panama is generating more attention to the canal, and the state of relations between the two countries going forward. President José Raúl Mulino has been defiant in asserting that Panama has full sovereignty over the canal, with the country’s government formally raising concerns with the U.N. over Trump’s threats to retake the waterway.
At the very least, it appears the Panamanian government is willing to humor Trump’s overtures, with authorities opening an audit into the offices of Panama Ports Company, which controls two of the canal’s adjacent ports—the Port of Balboa and the Port of Cristobal.
Panama Ports Company is a subsidiary of Hong Kong-based port operator CK Hutchison Holdings , which renewed a 25-year deal with the Panama Maritime Authority in 2021 to administer both ports.
Bells in Washington have gone off amid the complex Chinese ties that come with Hong Kong-based companies like Hutchison, as they are subject to a broadly defined national security law that China imposed on the special administrative region in 2020.
And although Trump’s rhetoric regarding the canal itself may be seen as alarmist, Panama cut years-long ties with Taiwan in 2017, and was the first Latin American country to enter into China’s global Belt and Road infrastructure development initiative a year later. Neighbors including Costa Rica, El Salvador and Honduras followed suit.
“In 2016–2017, that was well understood that part of the investments [China] made in Panama were conditioned upon Panama’s ability to convince the Dominican Republic and other countries to flip their recognition away from Taiwan,” Rubio said during his Senate confirmation hearing.
During the hearing, Rubio called Hutchison’s China ties a “very legitimate concern,” saying that the U.S. would have a “big national security and defense problem” if the company controlled the canal-adjacent ports in a time of conflict.
“An argument could be made that the terms under which that canal were turned over have been violated,” Rubio told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee when pressed on Trump’s threats. “Because while technically, sovereignty over the canal has not been turned over to a foreign power—in reality, a foreign power today possesses, through their companies, which we know are not independent, the ability to turn the canal into a chokepoint in a moment of conflict. And that is a direct threat to the national interest and security of the United States.”
Trump allies in the GOP-led Senate are already further facilitating the president’s ability to make waves in the region, and namely deter Chinese influence.
On Thursday, Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) introduced a resolution “intended to safeguard the Panama Canal from Chinese influence and ensure neutrality.” The non-binding resolution doesn’t compel any action, but calls on the Panamanian government to cut its political and economic ties with China and Chinese businesses.
Sens. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), Katie Britt (R-Ala.), Roger Marshall (R-Kan.), Pete Ricketts (R-Neb.), and Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) joined Sen. Schmitt on the resolution.
Schmitt has raised the issue regarding Chinese assets in global ports since he assumed his office in January 2023.
Like Schmitt, Rubio has had eyes on the canal in recent years, but for different reasons. As a Florida senator, he led a bipartisan group of lawmakers in urging Panama’s government to investigate tankers accused of smuggling Iranian oil through the canal.
The Panama Canal hosts an estimated 5 percent of global trade, according to the Panama Canal Authority. More than 70 percent of the cargo that goes through the canal originates or is destined for the U.S.
The U.S. and China are the top two countries that use the canal, when accounting for both the origin and destination of cargo.
