PrairiePundit

DC Daily Journal: ... President Donald Trump has set his sights on a dramatic geopolitical play, reportedly directing the U.S. military to devise plans for retaking the Panama Canal and curbing China’s growing influence in the region. The initiative, led by United States Southern Command, signals a potential shift in America’s approach to a waterway it once built and controlled. According to NBC News, the military’s options range widely—from collaborating with Panama’s security forces to a full-on U.S. takeover by force. Officials stress that the extent of military involvement hinges on Panama’s response to U.S. demands, placing the Central American nation at a crossroads in its dealings with Washington. Adm. Alvin Holsey, head of Southern Command, is driving the effort, having “presented draft strategies to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth this week,” per the report. While a complete U.S. seizure of Panama isn’t off the table, insiders say it’s a last resort—likely only if a beefed-up A...

 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...

 Daily Torch: “We need Greenland for national security purposes I’ve been told that for a long time long… People really don’t even know if Denmark has any legal right to it, but if they do, they should give it up, because we need it for national security. That’s for the free world… You don’t even need binoculars, you look outside, you have China ships all over the place, you have Russian ships all over the place. We’re not letting that happen.” That was President-elect Donald Trump at a Palm Beach, Fla. press conference on Jan. 7 articulating his desire to acquire Greenland from Denmark, bringing the icy wasteland under U.S. protection and countering China and Russia’s joint naval exercises and other activities in the region that Trump says endanger U.S. national security. On Dec. 5, U.S. deputy assistant secretary of defense for Arctic and Global Resilience Iris Ferguson warned that the level of cooperation between China and Russia in the area was “unprecedented”: “The increasin...

 Breitbart: President-elect Donald Trump threatened to retake the Panama Canal if Panama continued to “rip-off” the United States with “exorbitant” transit fees. In a post on Truth Social, Trump spoke about the Panama Canal and how it was viewed as a “vital national asset” to the U.S., and how the U.S. was the “number one user” of the Panama Canal. Trump added when former President Jimmy Carter “foolishly” gave the Panama Canal away, it wasn’t for “Panama to charge” the U.S., “its Navy, and corporations” doing business in the U.S. high prices. “The Panama Canal is considered a VITAL National Asset for the United States, due to its critical role to America’s Economy and National,” Trump wrote. “A secure Panama Canal is crucial for U.S. Commerce, and rapid deployment of the Navy, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and drastically cuts shipping times to U.S. ports.” “The United States is the Number One user of the Canal, with over 70 percent of all transits heading to, or from, U.S. ...

 Breitbart: José Raúl Mulino, a last-minute conservative candidate in Panama’s 2024 presidential race, was elected in Sunday’s general election with a nearly ten percent lead over his closest rival. Mulino, a 64-year-old lawyer and former minister of security in the country, campaigned on implementing a crackdown on migration by “closing” the dangerous Darien Gap jungle trail that Panama shares with Colombia, which thousands of migrants from South America and other regions use to reach the United States. Mulino has also vowed to improve Panama’s economy. ... Mulino should at least slow the migration of illegals to the US.  That is something Joe Biden has failed to do.  A Trump election would also slow the flow of migrants to the US. 

 Reuters: The average wait time for non-booked vessels at the Panama Canal jumped by between 44% and 59% last month as a prolonged drought led to restrictions on daily transits and ship drafts. The Panama Canal Authority began imposing the restrictions earlier this year in a move to conserve water. Only 32 vessels with a draft of up to 44 feet are now allowed to pass everyday, from 36 ships and maximum draft of 50 feet in normal conditions. The limitations have led to bottlenecks at both ends of the canal, pushed up freight tariffs and forced some vessels to divert to avoid delivery delays, especially those that do not have priority to pass. Waiting time averaged 8.85 days for southbound transit and 9.44 days for northbound passage in August, from 5.56 days and 6.55 days, respectively, in July, according to data from the Panama Canal Authority. The waiting time was longer for general cargo vessels, dry bulk carriers and tankers transporting liquefied petroleum gas. Container ships,...

 AP: The government of Panama said Thursday it will launch a new campaign to stem the flow of migrants through the dangerous, jungle-clad Darien Gap, after crossings hit 300,000 so far this year. In comparison, less than 250,000 migrants crossed in all of 2022. The plan, named “Darien is a jungle, not a road,” will be launched next week, officials said, but they could barely hide their frustration with neighboring Colombia's inability to stop migrants from coming to the two countries’ roadless border. “Despite all the efforts, meetings with other countries involved have not managed to stop (the flow of migrants),” Panama's Security Minister Juan Manuel Pino told a news conference. Officials said the massive trekking of migrants through the gap — now running between 2,500 and 3,000 per day — has polluted and damaged the jungle, as well as exposed people to risks and rights abuses. Samira Gozaine, Panama’s top immigration official, said “don't tell me the border can't be...

Politico: The Trump administration is pushing back aggressively against what the intelligence community often refers to as the “Iran Threat Network” or ITN, and as part of that campaign it is especially keen to focus on the activities of Hezbollah, the pro-Iranian Lebanese militia, in Latin America. Now, new revelations about a Hezbollah cold case from 1994 underscore the importance of rolling back the group’s footprint in the region. On July 19, 1994, the day after Hezbollah operatives blew up the AMIA Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, the group sent a suicide bomber to take down a flight on Alas Chiricanas Airlines, a Panamanian commuter airliner carrying mostly Jewish passengers, including several Americans. The case languished for years, but the FBI appears to have recently collected new information which, together with evidence gleaned from other current investigations, is likely to serve as the basis for a variety of actions aimed at Hezbollah, the lynchpin of the ITN ...

Fausta: Panama Papers on Cuba’s control of Venezuela’s passport system The reason this is a big deal is because Venezuela has been providing passports to what appear to be Middle Eastern terrorists.  This makes the deal with Cuba look even more suspect.  Congress needs to investigate this connection as does Homeland Security.

NBC News: For the first time since its completion a century ago, the Panama Canal is being widened, setting up a long and costly battle among U.S. ports for the business of handling supersized container ships filled with goods from Asia. When the project is completed in 2015, ports on the East Coast and Gulf Coast will be able to compete for business that until now has been dominated by West Coast ports. At stake are thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in federal and local investment. The case of the MSC Fabiola — a hulking mass of steel and containers nearly as long as the Empire State Building is high — illustrates what those stakes are. When the Fabiola pulled into the Port of Long Beach on a foggy Friday morning this spring after a 13-day trip across the Pacific Ocean from China, it was a major event, although it received little attention. The ship's arrival marked the first time in history that a ship of its size had docked at a U.S. port. Khalid Bachkar, a p...

Fuel Fix: The rapid growth of U.S. oil and gas production is dramatically changing trade patterns in the region, and next year’s expansion of the Panama Canal likely will prompt even more dramatic shifts, according to a new report from the U.S. Energy Information Administration. The widening of the Panama Canal, scheduled for completion next year, will vastly increase the opportunity for energy producers in the Americas to export their liquefied natural gas to Asia, according to the report. As it stands, no LNG trade goes through the canal, and the crossing isn’t used for significant volumes of petroleum trade either. Size limitations often makes it too costly to ship those fuels. But Panama’s multibillion-dollar effort to expand the canal to accommodate larger vessels and double its transit capacity is scheduled to be complete in 2015. The U.S. EIA report says both petroleum and LNG trade through the passage likely will increase. “While the Americas have accounted for a considerab...

NY Times: The Panamanian authorities have seized a North Korean-flagged ship traveling from Cuba through the Panama Canal that was carrying “undeclared military cargo,” and Panama’s president said late Monday that the cargo was presumably “sophisticated missile equipment.” The president, Ricardo Martinelli said in a radio interview that the illegal cargo was found in two containers hidden behind a large shipment of sugar. In a Twitter posting he included a photo of what looked like a green tubular object in a container. The United Nations has imposed broad sanctions on North Korea that seek to curtail its ability to export and import weaponry, particularly missile components and technology. Earlier this month, the United States blacklisted a general in Myanmar, Thein Htay, for buying military goods from North Korea. American officials say that North Korea’s arms trade has helped finance the country’s nuclear and missile ambitions. In February, North Korea carried out its third nuc...

Washington Post: This is a story about big, and how one of the biggest construction projects in the world, the remaking of the Panama Canal, will let bigger boats sail into deeper harbors, where authorities are spending billions dredging channels, blasting tunnels and buying cranes from China the size of 14-story buildings to accommodate super-sized cargo. All this might knock a couple of dollars off the price of a smartphone shipped from Shanghai — or alleviate poverty in Panama, where the government plans to make a fortune in tolls — or create a windfall for the ports ready to receive the big ships, such as those in Baltimore and Norfolk. Or not. Nobody’s sure, because no expert can predict with any certainty how the web of global trade routes will be redrawn, and who the winners and losers might be. But with the $5.25 billion expansion of the Panama Canal now officially half complete, a scramble is on among the hemisphere’s ports to lure a new generation of elephantine cargo ships...

Image via Wikipedia Washington Post: U.S. and South Korean negotiators agreed Friday to a free-trade deal that the Obama administration hopes will increase American exports by billions of dollars annually and create momentum for a broader push on free trade in the coming year. The pact is the administration's first major foray into the arena of free-trade politics, and officials said it may be followed by efforts to have Congress approve pending deals with Panama and Colombia and reinvigorate the larger Doha round of global trade talks. The South Korea agreement was first negotiated by the George W. Bush administration , but during follow-up negotiations the Obama administration won further concessions considered important by American automakers. Those include a slower reduction of U.S. tariffs on imported South Korean vehicles and a provision under which South Korea will exempt up to 25,000 of any American company's cars from its strict safety standards, as long as ...

Image via Wikipedia IBD: President Obama vowed to double exports in five years, but June's record trade deficit shows U.S. exports dropping. Trade requires new markets, so why do three finished free-trade pacts sit without a vote? The U.S. trade deficit unexpectedly widened by a record $7.9 billion to $49.9 billion, with U.S. shipments abroad tumbling the most since October 2008. The reason that sticks out is President Obama's failure to open a single new market to U.S. exports in the 18 months of his presidency. Trade pacts, more than anything, are express highways to exports and jobs. Not surprisingly, the U.S.' biggest markets are those like Mexico and Canada that have free-trade accords with the U.S. By contrast, Obama's National Export Initiative, announced in March, consists mainly of subsidies and loans — not free trade. No great shock then that exports are falling and trade deficits growing. True, monthly deficits are little more than accounting tools,...

BBC: A US judge has refused to block the extradition of ex-Panama leader Manuel Noriega to France, where he faces 10 years in prison for money laundering. A federal judge rejected arguments by Noriega's lawyers that his status as a US prisoner of war negated the request. Noriega, 72, is due to complete a 1992 prison term on drugs-trafficking and racketeering in Miami in September. He was made a US prisoner of war after his arrest during the US invasion of Panama more than 17 years ago. In a 12-page decision, judge William Hoeveler said Noriega's status was not meant "to shield him from all future prosecutions for serious crimes he is alleged to have committed". Noriega is to gain early release from a Florida prison for good behaviour in September, but a fight has begun over where he will be heading next. The French authorities want his extradition so that he can serve out a sentence on a 1999 money-laundering conviction obtained in absentia. But Panama's P...