Stretching 80 kilometers and no more than 150 meters at certain points, the Panama Canal, through which 6% of world commercial transits have become a test of Washington’s capacity to withdraw Chinese interests. In the center of this confrontation is the Hong Kong company that has operated the two terminals in the limbs of the channel since 1997, CK Hutchison.
The Secretary of Defense of the United States, Pete Hegseeth, visited the small Central American country on Tuesday, April 8 and Wednesday 9, follows a trip to Secretary of State Marco Rubio in early February. Still with a pocket square in the colors of the American flag, Hegseeth sometimes did what, according to Trump administration standards, it may seem like a conciliatory statement: “We certainly understand that the Panama Canal is in Panama.”
But he quickly exceeded the limits of acceptability for his hosts, claiming to have obtained priority and free passage for US military ships and, above all, seeing his visit as an “opportunity to revive the stations, the Panamanian troops of the base of the environmental plants.”
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