The president of Panama calls Trump’s speech on the “recovery” of the Panama Canal a lie

Panama City (AP) – Panama president José Raúl Mulino accused US President Donald Trump on Wednesday of lying when he declared in his speech to the Congress that his administration “recovered” the Panama Canal.

Trump was referring to an agreement announced Tuesday for a consortium led by the American Company of Investment of Blackrock Inc. to buy controlling participation in the company held by a Chinese group which operates ports at the two ends of the Panama Canal.

Panama maintains that it has full control of the canal and that the operation by the Hong Kong group of ports did not constitute Chinese control on the navigable path, and that, consequently, the sale to an American company would not represent any American “recovery” of the canal. The Panama government qualified on Tuesday the sale of private transaction.

Mulino in a message published at X on Wednesday, refused that the agreement has come due to the American pressure. “I reject on behalf of Panama and all Panamanians this new affront to truth and our dignity as a nation,” he wrote. He accused Trump of “lying again”.

Trump spoke of resuming the Panama Canal from his campaign, arguing that the United States should never have put control of the Panamanians and that the United States was surfing for having used it.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio met Mulino in early February and insisted that China was an influence on channel operations. The accent was the Chinese consortium that led the ports. Panama rejected that China has an influence on the canal operations.

“Cooperation between our governments involves a clear understanding in terms of questions of mutual interest,” wrote Mulino. “It has nothing to do with” the recovery of the canal “or with the tarnish of our national sovereignty.”

In a file, CK Hutchison Holding said on Tuesday that it would sell all the actions of Hutchison Port Holdings and Hutchison Port Group Holdings at the BlackRock Consortium in an agreement worth almost 23 billion dollars, including $ 5 billion in debt.

The agreement must be approved by the Panama government.

The United States built the canal in the early 1900s when it was looking for the means to facilitate the transit of commercial and military ships between its coast. Washington gave up control of the Panama navigable track on December 31, 1999, under a treaty signed in 1977 by President Jimmy Carter. Trump said Carter “stupidly” gave the channel.

Frank Sixt, CK Hutchison co -management director, said in a statement that the transaction was “the result of a quick, discreet but competitive process in which many offers and expressions of interest have been received”.

“I would like to emphasize that the transaction is of a purely commercial nature and entirely unrelated to the recent political reports concerning the ports of Panama,” said Sixt.

Originally published: March 5, 2025 at 7:30 am PST