COMMENTARY If President-elect Trump wants to thwart China's canal influence in Panama, he needs to offer the isthmus partnership instead of petulance — and a more serious ambassador pick.
President-elect Donald Trump’s Panama Canal rants are both wrong and right.
But even where he’s right, Trump risks getting it really wrong — including his questionable choice of a Miami-Dade County commissioner to be his ambassador to Panama. (More on that later.)
Trump, who becomes President again on Jan. 20, is wrong about the 1977 treaty the late President Jimmy Carter signed that handed U.S. control of the canal to Panama in 1999.
The deal didn’t “foolishly” subvert U.S. interests, as Trump and his America First fanatics are howling. It enhanced those interests, diplomatically and economically.
It improved America’s dodgy image in the Americas — an example of Carter making the U.S. a more respectful hemispheric partner. And it transformed the Panama Canal from an inefficient military asset into a vibrant commercial enterprise that now handles 6% of global cargo traffic — more than two-thirds of it going to or from U.S. docks like PortMiami.
READ MORE: Miami's proud (boy) tradition is preserved: is Kevin Cabrera the new Joe Carollo?
All of which has made Panama an attractive investment target for communist China — which in the past decade has poured billions into port and other infrastructure projects, giving dodgy Beijing an outsize presence there.
And that’s where Trump is right.
A core term of the 1977 pact was keeping the Panama Canal geopolitically neutral — and the U.S. has reason to fear China’s influence could endanger that. Chinese financing in the developing world is usually described as “predatory,” and its larger aim is to make countries not just debt-reliant on Beijing, but more sympathetic to its totalitarian ideology.
But here’s where Trump gets it wrong.
I can understand Cabrera's nomination if bully-threatening is all Trump wants to do in Panama. But if he actually wants to win in Panama, he'll change course.
You don’t turn Panama from Beijing to Washington by bully-threatening, as Trump’s doing, to retake control of the canal, presumably by military force. A retro, gunboat-diplomacy move like that would violate the 1977 treaty and make America a global pariah.
Yes, Trump could send troops into Panama, under the treaty’s defense-of-canal-neutrality article, to intimidate China — if, that is, he wants to risk an even more blunderous military conflict with Beijing.
Nor do you woo Panama by screaming the canal is “ripping off” U.S. shippers. The Panama Canal’s transit fees are in line with other major canals like Suez, and if they’ve risen recently it’s because of the costs of dealing with a serious drought.
Too complacent
Which actually brings us to how Trump should confront China in Panama.
Let’s remember that Panama started partnering with China in 2017, during Trump’s first presidency. And that in 2020, with Trump still in the White House, Chinese companies answered the call to help develop a water management system there, precisely to combat drought.
U.S. companies don’t know how to do that? More importantly, the U.S. government doesn’t know how to create incentives for U.S. companies to do that?
This isn’t just a Trump failing. U.S. presidents and congresses, Democrat and Republican, have been noticeably complacent about China’s incursion into this hemisphere in this century — when Beijing’s bilateral trade with Latin America has leapt from $10 billion to $500 billion.
Trump therefore should urge Congress to pass bills like the bipartisan Americas Act. It would revive U.S.-led hemispheric economic partnership in part by making the U.S. more serious about “nearshoring” industrial production back into this hemisphere — like semi-conductor supply-chain management with Panama.
But that will require astute U.S. diplomatic management. Trump won’t likely get that with his pick for U.S. ambassador to Panama: 34-year-old Miami-Dade County Commissioner and Trump acolyte Kevin Marino Cabrera.
I can understand the nomination if bully-threatening is all Trump plans to do in Panama. Cabrera, after all, is perhaps best known for taking part with the right-wing hate group Proud Boys in a menacing, door-pounding protest against then Democratic House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi during her 2018 visit to Miami.
If Trump hopes to win over Panama, however, he’ll need an emissary more experienced and less callow. Although Cabrera has done some maturing as a county commissioner, that doesn't make him a match for China's new ambassador to Panama, Xu Xueyuan, one of Beijing’s most seasoned and effective diplomats.
Still, on Planet Trump being seasoned and effective matters much less than sounding disruptive and enraged. So I'm betting that’s the tack Trump and Cabrera will take in Panama.
I just hope, for the hemisphere’s sake, that I’m really wrong.
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