President José Raúl Mulino of Panama told reporters on Thursday that any negotiation to return the Panama Canal to American control was “impossible” and that he could “not negotiate” on the issue, as it was a matter of the core sovereignty of the country.
Mulino made the remarks during a press conference in anticipation of the arrival of American Secretary of State Marco Rubio to the country, who is expected to meet with Mulino on Sunday. Rubio will make his first trip abroad as America’s top diplomat to Panama, followed by El Salvador, Costa Rica, Guatemala, and the Dominican Republic.
“For many reasons, U.S. foreign policy has long focused on other regions while overlooking our own,” Rubio wrote in a column for the Wall Street Journal on Friday. “As a result, we’ve let problems fester, missed opportunities, and neglected partners. That ends now.”
Mulino, a conservative, became president in May on campaign promises to end the surge of illegal migrants crossing the Darién Gap, a deadly jungle trail in Panama preferred by many Venezuelans and other South Americans en route to the United States. Mulino’s administration, seeking cooperation with President Donald Trump on immigration, was blindsided by Trump’s declaration that he hoped to see the Panama Canal, built by the United States, back in American hands. Trump also accused Panama of charging American ships too much for crossing the canal and of allowing communist China to control the canal and benefit the most from its use.
Mulino told reporters that he did not expect to have anything to discuss about the canal with Rubio.
“I cannot negotiate or much less open a negotiation process on the Panama Canal, that is Panama’s,” Mulino asserted on Thursday. “On the Canal, it is very difficult, impossible.”
Mulino referred to the dispute as a “David versus Goliath situation” and insisted that “the soul of a country is not up for discussion.” He added that he did not have any evidence that the Chinese military was operating in the Panama Canal, nor had U.S. officials offered any.
“Regarding the Panama Canal… the first thing I want to say is that in these first months of serving I have not received from the U.S. embassy… absolutely any information regarding the alleged military presence of a foreign country in the Canal,” Mulino asserted. “That information, if it existed, they kept it to themselves because they did not transmit it to us in an official way.”
“Panama controls the Panama Canal, and the administration of it has always been in Panamanian hands,” he insisted. “In the last few years, our canal has been expanded, grew, and serves the entire world in an equitable world. This guarantees the freedom of global commerce.”
Mulino clarified that he was not seeking “any kind of confrontation,” particularly because “there is no basis for any confrontation,” again denying claims of Chinese interference in the canal.
The Panamanian newspaper La Estrella reported that Mulino did concede that Panamá Ports, a subsidiary of the Hong Kong company CK Hutchison Holdings, has been administering two Panamanian ports and that he would not stop it from doing so. In 1997, the United Kingdom handed control of Hong Kong to China, which the Communist Party consolidated complete control of with a violent crackdown on dissidents in 2019.
Trump has made restoring the American presence in the Panama Canal a priority of his second term in office.
“Look, the Panama Canal is vital to our country. It’s being operated by China. And we gave the Panama Canal to Panama; we didn’t give it to China. And they’ve abused it,” Trump said shortly before taking office. “They’ve abused that gift.”
Trump criticized former President Jimmy Carter for signing the agreement that handed the Canal, built by Americans, over to Panama. Panama formally took control of the Canal in 1999 as part of the Torrijos-Carter Treaties signed in 1978.
The Torrijos-Carter Treaties include a provision that requires Panama to maintain neutrality of the canal, meaning no foreign party can take it over. The potential growth of Chinese influence in and around the canal could potentially present a challenge to that neutrality provision, supporters of Trump’s position have asserted.
Rubio, during his confirmation hearing for the secretary of state job, said he would consider the possibility that Panama violated the neutrality provision.
“I’m compelled to respect that an argument could be made that the terms under which that canal were turned over have been violated, because, while technically, sovereignty over the canal has not been turned over to a foreign power, in reality, a foreign power possesses it through their companies,” Rubio told Congress.
Writing on Friday, Rubio mentioned the Panama Canal as a key concern regarding Chinese influence in the U.S.’s orbit, lamenting that prior presidential administrations have neglected the Western Hemisphere in their foreign policy.
“These nations were neglected by past administrations that prioritized the global over the local and pursued policies that accelerated China’s economic development, often at our neighbors’ expense,” Rubio wrote. “All the while, the Chinese Communist Party uses diplomatic and economic leverage—such as at the Panama Canal—to oppose the U.S. and turn sovereign nations into vassal states.”
Rubio extended an olive branch to Western Hemisphere presidents, calling them “pragmatists who put their citizens first” and stating that he expected them to be open to negotiation with America.
While maintaining a hard line on the canal, Mulino expressed enthusiasm in collaborating with Washington on other issues, namely immigration. He described Panama as the only country in the region that “instead of receiving [migrants], it repatriates citizens of different nationalities that, obviously, are seeking the United States as their final destination.” Mulino repeated his past assertion that the true U.S. southern border is in the Darién Gap, not Texas, and boasted of helping America by organizing 59 deportation flights in his slightly more than half a year in office.
“We are not a migrant reception center or anything like that, on the contrary,” he said. “We are a center of repatriations and deportations.”
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