Panama caves to US pressure, won’t renew canal agreement with China

The initiative seeks to spread Chinese Communist influence worldwide through public investment from Beijing.

By Adam Kredo, The Washington Free Beacon

Panamanian president José Raúl Mulino said his country would not renew its agreement with China’s Belt and Road Initiative following a visit from Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a move that will make it the first Latin American country to leave the initiative.

Mulino, speaking to reporters on Sunday after Rubio’s first foreign trip as America’s top diplomat, said he believes the agreement is due for renewal in a year or two. He said he would study “whether it can be finished earlier or not.”

The news is a blow to Beijing, which views Panama as critical to its foreign influence efforts in the Western Hemisphere. Chinese businesses operate ports near the Panama Canal, which the United States owned and operated until moving control to Panama in 1999.

Following his meeting with Mulino, Rubio said the United States “cannot, and will not, allow the Chinese Communist Party to continue with its effective and growing control over the Panama Canal area.”

Brazil also considered joining the Belt and Road Initiative late last year, signaling a desire to align with the Chinese Communist Party. The country abandoned those plans soon after, however, with officials expressing fear about signing long-term agreements with Beijing.

In late 2023, meanwhile, Italy became the first European nation to exit the initiative, arguing that the deal did little to boost the country’s exports to China.

Panama was the first Latin American nation to join the Belt and Road Initiative and now becomes the first to back away from it. The initiative seeks to spread Chinese influence worldwide through public investment from Beijing.

Panama’s decision to leave the initiative reverses “the Chinese Communist Party’s geopolitical gains in our own hemisphere,” said Michael Sobolik, a veteran China analyst with the Hudson Institute think tank.

“Americans should welcome this achievement, and every BRI partner in Latin America should follow Panama’s example,” he told the Washington Free Beacon.

Mauricio Claver-Carone, the U.S. special envoy for Latin America, said Rubio “is effectively restoring American credibility on his first stop on his first trip abroad as Secretary of State.”