There are plenty of ways to dodge a toll, such as defacing your license plate or forcing someone else to pay the charges. However, very few people are bold enough to simply say they have a deal that doesn’t really exist. The U.S. State Department published a statement on Wednesday that the federal government’s ships no longer had to pay a fee for transiting the Panama Canal after reaching a deal with the Panamanian government. However, the Panama Canal Authority is now denying this ever happened.
Like with Canada and Greenland, President Donald Trump set his crosshairs on the Panama Canal to start his second term in office. The man who bankrupted his own casinos multiple times claims that Panama is overcharging for use of the country’s famous ocean-linking passage, BBC News reports. Trump obviously threatened to take back control of the canal by force, a threat that carries weight because the U.S. has invaded Panama before. He also believes that China is actually in control of the waterway. According to CNN, Trump said:
“China is running the Panama Canal that was not given to China, that was given to Panama foolishly, but they violated the agreement, and we’re going to take it back, or something very powerful is going to happen.”
President Trump is mostly wrong, stretching a kernel of truth to its absolute limits. Hutchison Ports, a Hong Kong-based company, operates the ports at the Atlantic and Pacific entrances of the Panama Canal. The operator took over the contract in 1997, the same year Britain handed control of Hong Kong to China. In the immediate aftermath of the handover, Hong Kong remained a largely independent free-market oasis.
Ignoring the Trump administration’s posturing, the Panama Canal has enough issues as it is. Climate change is lowering the water level of the lakes that connect the canal’s locks, restricting the number of ships that can safely transit. In 2023, a persistent drought caused a 154-ship traffic jam, and the wait time to enter the canal was three weeks. If the tolls aren’t going to discourage American ships from using the Panama Canal, the dry lake beds will.