A Man, a Plan, a Canal — Trump

The president-elect lays a marker on the canal that connects two hemispheres.

AP/Matias Delacroix, file
A cargo ship traverses the Agua Clara Locks of the Panama Canal, September 2, 2024. AP/Matias Delacroix, file

At a time of encroachment by Communist China in Latin America, President-elect Trump’s call to wrest back control of the Panama Canal offers an opportunity to reassert America’s proper role in the region. Since the days of President Monroe, after all, the Western Hemisphere is supposed to be off limits to foreign intrusions. Trump, pointing to China, is warning that the canal is a “vital national asset” that can fall into the “wrong hands.”

Beijing, the Guardian newspaper reports, already has control — via a Hong Kong corporation — of two ports out of the five ocean harbors that adjoin the canal. That kind of infiltration by the Communist mandarins is echoed across the hemisphere, with a Chinese-built “megaport” in Peru promising to “transform regional trade,” as the Financial Times puts it, and Colombia forging a “strategic partnership” with Beijing, our Jim Brooke reports

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