The director of the Panama Canal Authority is pushing back on President-elect Donald Trump's demands to regain control of the famous shipping connection between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, reported the Wall Street Journal — and warning that there is no way to meet his demands for how it should be operated.
Trump recently roped the Panama Canal into the growing list of various land possessions he has fantasized about annexing, including Greenland and Canada. He has demanded the canal be "returned" to America, because “China’s basically taken it over."
"China’s at both ends of the Panama Canal. China’s running the Panama Canal," he said.
Ricaurte Vásquez Morales, who heads up the Panamanian agency responsible for managing the canal, says all of this is nonsense.
“The accusations that China is running the Canal are unfounded. China has no involvement whatsoever in our operations,” Vásquez Morales said in an interview on Wednesday. “Rules are rules and there are no exceptions. We cannot discriminate for the Chinese, or the Americans, or anyone else. This will violate the neutrality treaty, international law and it will lead to chaos.”
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Trump has also alleged U.S. ships are charged higher rates than other vessels to go through the canal and demanding $3 billion from the U.S. for repairs, which Vásquez Morales also says is not true.
"Vásquez Morales said Panama hadn’t requested any U.S. funds to improve the canal and he wasn’t aware what $3 billion Trump was referring to because the authority funds repairs through its own revenues," said the report.
While a Hong Kong-based firm has operated a select pair of terminals on either end of the Panama Canal for decades, the canal itself is solely controlled by the Panamanian government, which is tasked with keeping it open to all.
The United States controlled the Panama Canal zone for decades after its construction — the late Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) was famously born there — but a treaty signed in 1977 gradually turned control over to the Panamanian government, a process which was fully completed Dec. 31, 1999.
