In his congressional address on March 4, ­Donald Trump reiterated his intention of “reclaiming” the Panama Canal on the grounds that “we built it.” He claimed Panama was charging the United States unfair fees and allowing China to run the canal. He stated that Secretary of State Marco Rubio had already forced Panama to end its contracts with the Hong Kong company that was operating two of the ports and that he would “get the canal back.” 

A few days after Trump first announced his intention to retake the Canal, I called my brother Rafael in Panama City. “How are you doing?” I asked. “I’m tense,” he answered. I suspect his mood reflected a more general malaise. Flashbacks of the U.S. military invasion of 1989, memories of obnoxious U.S. troops who ruled over the Canal Zone for nearly a century. The Zone split the country in half and could not always be avoided. And there is worry about what this could mean for the economy of a small country that has finally begun gaining from the profits of the canal. 

Panama is smaller than the state of South ­Carolina with a population of 4.5 million people. It has an extensive shoreline, many mountainous regions that resist cultivation and a mining industry that only accounts for 1% of the country’s GDP. In 1513, Vasco Nuñez de Balboa accidentally “discovered” the Pacific Ocean on Panama’s western shores while on a mission of plunder but was executed by the Spanish crown for treason just six years later. Panamanians believe the charge of treason was triggered by his marriage to a Native woman, with a wedding conducted in local custom. They erected a statue in his honor and named their coinage “Balboas.” But Panamanian Balboas remain so weak and unstable that the country persists in using the U.S. dollar as its official currency.

U.S. relations with Panama have continued this odd amalgam of desire and contempt, plunder and mestizaje, for over a century. Profits from the only canal in this hemisphere were siphoned off by the United States from 1914 until the last day of 1999, when the Canal was “returned” to the country that actually built it, with a little capital and engineering from the U.S. Empire. The thousands who died in its construction, including many immigrant laborers from the West Indies, are given no credit and no acknowledgement when Donald Trump repeats the oft-repeated claims that “we” — meaning the United States — built the canal. 

The truth is that when the United States returned the Canal, it was almost obsolete. It could not accommodate an increased amount of traffic. Moreover, many ships today are one-and-a-half times the size of the ships that could pass through the old canal. The government held a national referendum in 2006 and with overwhelming popular support, launched an ambitious project to enlarge the canal and build an entirely new shipping lane. It took over ten years and over $6 billion, but today, the canal can handle new monolithic Panamax ships and military ships as well as the increased global commerce. And now the United States wants it back. 

Seventy percent of the ships that pass through the canal either leave from or return to U.S. ports, or both. The management of the canal since 2000 has operated through extensive international treaty agreements to ensure fairness and neutrality in both fees and rights of access. From the shores of the Casco Viejo in Panama City, where my father grew up, one can see the ships lined up for passage like children going to the cafeteria for lunch. No jumping the line is allowed. 

U.S. military ships pay a standard fee like everyone else. But Trump wants an end to fees for the United States and the power to disrupt at whim other commercial or military traffic in this hemisphere. This could seriously affect the global economy and its current power balances. 

My brother Rafael thinks, as do many others in Panama, that Trump is playing poker. His threats may be aimed at wresting control of the canal for U.S. interests. On March 4, the Trump administration strong-armed a Hong Kong-based conglomerate into selling its interests in ports on both ends of the Canal to BlackRock, a U.S. company. 

Trump may also want to undermine Panama’s political sovereignty so that the recent shelving of huge copper mining projects, after months of popular opposition, could be reversed and the projects continued. This would displace communities and endanger local environments — all for money that will largely flow out of the country. Just as the Canal profits long did. 

Trump has also used his threats to coerce the Panamanian government to take some people deported from the United States, hold them in detention centers and “re-migrate” them to their countries of origin. He is thus expanding the Guantanamo offshore model of torture, but this time with more hands-on collusion by locals.

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