The president of the United States, Donald Trump, insisted in his inauguration speech at the Capitol that China The Panama Canal has been taken and he will take it back.
“It was deceptively given to Panama and the United States has spent more money than has been spent on any work in history and 38,000 lives were lost,” Trump reiterated.
He added that Panama made a “promise that has not been fulfilled; The spirit of the treaty has been completely violated and American ships are paid too much and treated unfairly and that includes the American Navy.“.
“More than anything, China operates in the Panama Canal; we did not give it to China, we gave it to Panama and we are going to return it to the United States,” he said.
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Weeks before his inauguration as president of the United States, Trump made the same statements about the Chinese presence in the Canal, which reverted to Panama on December 31, 1999, as established in the Torrijos-Carter Treaties of 1977negotiated by the recently deceased Jimmy Carter and General Omar Torrijos Herrera.
On December 31, the Canal commemorated 25 years of administration in Panamanian hands.
Panamanian politicians, analysts and experts have agreed on several occasions that Trump’s statements are far from reality, because the number of Americans he refers to did not die in the Canal.
-Even Marco Rubio, who was nominated by Trump as Secretary of State, recently echoed the US president’s statements, without showing evidence in the Senate.
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The president of Panama, José Raúl Mulino, has indicated on several occasions that the interoceanic waterway has been a source of pride for both Panamanians and the world, since it has remained a profitable and beneficial project for all.
“In our hands the Canal has not stopped growing and it is our hands that contribute greatly to international trade advancing along the path of progress, towards new levels of greatness.”, stated on December 31.
In that sense, he reaffirmed: “There are no other hands in our Canal, other than the Panamanian ones”, Mulino argued at the time.
In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, cited by AFP, the administrator of the Canal, Ricaurte Vásquez Morales, said that bowing to Trump’s demand that American ships passing through the waterway have preferential treatment “would lead to chaos.” .
“The rules are the rules and there are no exceptions,” said the leader of the Panama Canal Authority, Ricuarte Vásquez Morales, to the Wall Street Journal.
