The Chicoms and the Panama Canal

 Newsmax:

Secretary of State Marco Rubio is on his first foreign trip in office, arriving in Central America on Saturday to press President Donald Trump's top priority — curbing illegal immigration — and to bring the message that the U.S. wants to reclaim control over the Panama Canal despite intense resistance from regional leaders.

It's an unusual destination for the maiden voyage of America’s top diplomat, whose predecessors have generally favored Europe or Asia for their initial outings. It reflects not only the personal interest that Rubio — the first Hispanic to hold the nation’s most senior Cabinet post — has in the region but also the Trump administration’s intent to focus much of its foreign policy energy close to home.

“It’s no accident that my first trip abroad as secretary of state will keep me in the hemisphere,” Rubio wrote in The Wall Street Journal on Friday.

Limiting immigration and fighting narcotics smuggling are major elements of that effort, but another key priority will be curbing China’s growing influence in the Western Hemisphere, topped by reasserting U.S. control over the Panama Canal. The American-built canal was turned over to the Panamanians in 1999 and they object strongly to Trump's demand to hand it back.

Mass migration, drugs and hostile policies pursued by Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela have wreaked havoc, Rubio said in the Journal opinion piece. "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.”

Indeed, Rubio's first stop on the five-nation tour Saturday is Panama, whose president, José Raúl Mulino, says there will be no negotiation with the United States over ownership of the canal. He said he hoped Rubio’s visit would instead focus on shared interests like migration and combating drug trafficking.

“It’s impossible, I can’t negotiate,” Mulino said Thursday. "The canal belongs to Panama.”

Yet Rubio said he will make clear Trump's intent. In an interview Thursday with SiriusXM host Megyn Kelly, he said Trump's desire to retake control of the Panama Canal is driven by legitimate national security interests stemming from growing concerns about Chinese activity and influence in Latin America.
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Panama needs the US and it never should have done a deal with the Chicoms.  It should have known that it would be unacceptable to the US.   The mass migration problem was caused by the Biden administration and its open borders policy.  That is clearly changing under Trump and many of those migrants are likely to be deported.