PANAMA CITY — Panama President José Raúl Mulino on Wednesday accused U.S. President Donald Trump of mendacity when he stated in his handle to Congress that his administration was “reclaiming” the Panama Canal.
Trump was referencing a deal introduced Tuesday for a consortium led by the U.S. funding administration firm BlackRock Inc. to purchase a controlling stake within the firm held by a Chinese language group that operates ports at each ends of the Panama Canal.
Panama maintains that it has full management over the canal and that the Hong Kong-based group’s operation of the ports didn’t quantity to Chinese language management over the waterway, and that due to this fact the sale to a U.S.-based firm wouldn’t signify any U.S. “reclaiming” of the canal. Panama’s authorities on Tuesday referred to as the sale a non-public transaction.
Mulino in a message posted to X on Wednesday, rejected that the deal took place due to U.S. stress. “I reject within the identify of Panama and all Panamanians this new affront to the reality and our dignity as a nation,” he wrote. He accused Trump of “mendacity once more.”
Trump has talked about retaking the Panama Canal since his marketing campaign, arguing that the U.S. ought to have by no means turned management over to the Panamanians and that the U.S. was being overcharged for utilizing it.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio met with Mulino in early February and insisted that China was exerting affect over the canal’s operations. The main target was the Chinese language consortium operating the ports. Panama rejected that China had any affect over canal operations.
“Cooperation between our governments passes by means of clear understandings when it comes to problems with mutual curiosity,” Mulino wrote. “It doesn’t have something to do with ’reclaiming the canal’ nor with tarnishing our nationwide sovereignty.”
In a submitting, CK Hutchison Holding stated Tuesday that it will promote all shares in Hutchison Port Holdings and in Hutchison Port Group Holdings to the BlackRock consortium in a deal valued at almost $23 billion, together with $5 billion in debt.
The deal must be authorised by Panama’s authorities.
The US constructed the canal within the early 1900s because it seemed for methods to facilitate the transit of business and army vessels between its coasts. Washington relinquished management of the waterway to Panama on Dec. 31, 1999, below a treaty signed in 1977 by President Jimmy Carter. Trump has claimed that Carter “foolishly” gave the canal away.
Frank Sixt, co-managing director of CK Hutchison, stated in a press release that the transaction was “the results of a fast, discrete however aggressive course of wherein quite a few bids and expressions of curiosity have been obtained.”
“I want to stress that the transaction is only industrial in nature and wholly unrelated to current political information studies in regards to the Panama Ports,” Sixt stated.
