RIGHT SPEAK: Panama is Violating its Canal Treaty by Cozying Up to China — Risking US Safety; ‘We Dug It, We Own It’: The Case for Taking Back the Panama Canal

Panama is violating its Canal Treaty by cozying up to China — risking US safety:

“Welcome to the United States Canal!” the once and future President Donald Trump posted on Truth Social Sunday, along with a photo of an American flag proudly fluttering over a narrow body of water.

Earlier in the day, Trump had told a crowd at Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest rally that he would never allow the Panama Canal, a strategic waterway built by the United States over a century ago to connect the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, to fall into the “wrong hands.”

Trump made an economic argument along with his geopolitical one: “We’re being ripped off at the Panama Canal like we’re being ripped off everywhere else,” he told the audience as he denounced the increased fees billed to American shippers by the canal’s operators.

The waterway, originally an American possession, was given to Panama by President Jimmy Carter in two 1977 treaties that barely passed the two-thirds Senate majorities necessary for ratification.

The first treaty obliged Panama to operate the canal neutrally, with nondiscriminatory pricing, and allowed the United States to defend it from any threat that might interfere with its neutrality.

The second treaty transferred full control to Panama effective on Dec. 31, 1999, without superseding the first treaty’s broad provision allowing for US defense of this crucial military and economic asset.

Yet despite the assurances in these agreements, the sad truth is the Panama Canal is already in the “wrong hands”: China’s.

In 1996, Panama made a 25-year agreement to outsource management of the canal’s two entry ports — Cristóbal on the Atlantic side and Balboa on the Pacific — to a subsidiary of Hutchison Whampoa, a Hong Kong-based shipping firm.

Technically, the deal seemed to violate the 1977 Panama-US treaties, which guaranteed Panamanian operational control and local security for the canal as well as ownership.

At that time, however, Hong Kong was still a British colony — and both Congress and the US Federal Maritime Commission determined that Hutchison’s operations were not a threat to American interests.

Times have changed.--->READ MORE HERE

‘We Dug It, We Own It’:

The case for taking back the Panama Canal

In 1978, the Carter administration made a deal with General Omar Torrijos, the uniformed socialist strongman who had seized power in Panama, to abandon America’s crown jewel.

The Panama Canal had been built with over a decade of labor and half a billion of early twentieth century dollars by American engineers and visionaries who succeeded where the British and the French had failed, in the process they created a new country, Panama, and new trade routes.

Jimmy Carter had run for office promising to oppose a surrender of the canal. As with most of his policies, he turned out to have been lying. Even though the majority of Americans opposed the giveaway, Carter, Democrat Senate Majority Leader and KKK leader Robert Byrd, teamed up with GOP Senate Minority Leader Howard Baker, the worst RINO in Senate history, to conduct the surrender. This move would cost Baker his chances at a presidential nomination.

While Reagan’s election triumph tends to be credited to the economy, there is no doubt that his declaration, “we dug it, we own it” about the Panama Canal powered him to a primary win over Baker who was the favorite son of the D.C. establishment and Rockefeller Republicans.

Carter, the Klansman and the RINO managed to get the two Senate Republican votes they needed, including former Sen. Bob Packwood, and ensured the rise of Reagan and a conservative revolution. America lost the canal but it also bid goodbye to Jimmy Carter.

The Panama Canal treaty was similarly unpopular in Panama. Legal ratification of the treaty required a referendum. The leftist military dictatorship claimed to have carried one out in which a majority voted for the deal, but they did so at gunpoint. When Carter visited Panama in the summer of 1978, the leftist government had suppressed protests by shooting, killing and beating political opponents, making the treaty as illegitimate on Panama’s end as it was on America’s.

Since then the Panama Canal has always represented unfinished business.

The surrender of the Panama Canal had been based on worthless assurances that America would retain strategic control over it. These assurances were particularly worthless since Panama was under the boot of a Communist affiliated military dictator who, as Reagan rightly noted, is “there, not because he had the most votes, but because he had the most guns.”

Now China has effectively taken over the Panama Canal while America has done nothing.

Panama joined China’s Belt and Road Initiative. It recently renewed a contract with Hutchison Ports, a Hong Kong based company, to manage the canal. The ports around the canal are also controlled by Chinese companies. China has built four bridges over the canal and controls much of the construction projects and the vital infrastructure in Panama.

China for all intents and purposes controls the Panama Canal, the ports around it and the local infrastructure that makes international trade possible. The canal is essentially Chinese property.