US President Donald Trump stated on Sunday that “something very powerful is going to happen soon” regarding Chinese “influence” and control over the Panama Canal, stating that although the vital canal between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans was not granted to China, an agreement violation had occurred.
Donald Trump has referred to the Panama Canal as a contemporary “wonder of the world.” The United States constructed the canal, which opened in 1914 at the expense of thousands of workers, primarily African Americans from Barbados, Jamaica, and other Caribbean countries.
One of the first things that Trump had to do upon his return to White House was to threaten to seize ownership of the canal, which had been given to Panama in 1999 by former US President Jimmy Carter, on the grounds that Beijing was running it.
The President declared that the United States will retake the canal since Panama had broken the deal, but he did not believe that troops would be required.
“China’s running the Panama Canal… it was not given to China… But they violated the agreement and we’re going to take it back or something very powerful is going to happen,” Donald Trump told reporters on Sunday.
It all began in 1880 when a French corporation owned by one of the Suez Canal’s builders began building across the Panamanian Isthmus, which at the time was a part of Columbia. However, the firm fell bankrupt and ceded the project to the United States in 1902 for $40 million after almost 22,000 workers died from different tropical diseases, including yellow fever.
