These locals want Trump to win the battle for the Panama Canal

Telegraph

12-05-2025

Huddled together on a dirt bank outside a building site on the edge of the Panama Canal, the men shout fervidly about Donald Trump.
The majority of Panamanians have reacted with revulsion to Mr Trump's pledge to 'take back' the key waterway – with thousands having marched and burned effigies of the US president in protest.
But this gaggle of out-of-work construction workers are not excoriating Mr Trump – they are passionately cheering him on.
'May Trump come, take the canal in his pocket and remove all those people from its administration. They are thieves,' one worker, who asked to remain anonymous, bellows, his arms flailing.
Amid rising frustration with José Raúl Mulino, Panama's president, is an emerging belief that the canal benefits just a few 'elites', resulting in some Panamanians to call for Mr Trump's intervention.
In his first 100 days, Mr Trump has turned the 51-mile waterway which connects the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans into a political hot rod, claiming it is under Chinese control.
Although the Panamanian government has repeatedly denied any Chinese influence, a Hong Kong-based firm, CK Hutchison Holdings, does manage two ports adjacent to the canal, which some analysts have suggested raises competitive and security concerns for the US. Panama was one of the first countries to recognise Taiwan as part of China.
The Trump administration has pressured the firm to sell those interests to a US consortium that includes BlackRock Inc.
In December, a spokesman for China insisted the country 'will as always respect Panama's sovereignty' with regards to the waterway.
Only Panamanians are entitled to work on the canal and it is run by the Panama Canal Authority – but some workers have cited concern with Mr Mulino and what they claim is Chinese influence.
Work is currently under way on the canal's fourth bridge after a Chinese consortium won a $1.4 billion contract to build it, with local workmen claiming they have been shafted in favour of foreigners.
'We are Panamanians and we want to work here but we are unemployed, but the Chinese, they are working. The Panamanians are humiliated,' another worker, who did not want to be named, said.
Marvin Moreno, a welder who is currently working on the construction of the fourth bridge, is among the cohort of Panamanian workers egging Mr Trump on to seize the canal.
'Right now [Trump] is the best option because the president we have is putting Panamanians practically against a wall. He is practically acting as a dictator,' he told The Telegraph during his lunch break.
Mr Moreno, 42, said Mr Trump has 'his good things and bad things'. He said the Panamanian government was 'attacking our sovereignty', not Mr Trump.
Since taking office, Mr Trump has criticised former president Jimmy Carter for 'foolishly' returning the canal, which was constructed by the US in the early 1900s, to Panama. Two treaties signed in 1977 ceded the canal back to the Central American country – with the canal turned over on Dec 31, 1999.
The US is the canal's biggest user, with some 40 per cent of all US container traffic crossing it each year.
Amid claims America is being 'ripped off' by the canal, Mr Trump had dispatched Marco Rubio, his secretary of state, and Pete Hegseth, his defence secretary, to Panama – with the latter delivering a press conference from the side of the canal, the US flag next to him, telling the world: 'We will take back the Panama Canal from China's influence.'
Both visits paid dividends. Following Mr Rubio's visit in February, Mr Mulino said he had made an 'important' decision to pull out of China's Belt and Road Initiative, the country's massive investment project.
But the biggest wins for Mr Trump were those ironed out in a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) signed by the two countries during Mr Hegseth's visit in April.
The deal agrees to give US military vessels free passage of the canal, something critics say violates the neutrality treaty, and, crucially, it allows US troops to return to three areas on Panamanian soil for joint military training.
'It is an invasion... I said camouflaged invasion, because that's how I view it,' Ricardo Lombana, the leader of Panama's opposition, told The Telegraph.
'This is our country, and you're giving a designated area to a foreign government or to foreign military,' he said, adding that the concessions are likely illegal and are being challenged in court.
Javier Martínez-Acha, Panama's foreign affairs minister, has insisted the deal 'does not imply a surrender of sovereignty, nor does it violate the national constitution, nor the neutrality treaty'.
Days after The Telegraph spoke to Mr Lombana, Mr Trump said he wanted more. Writing on his Truth Social platform, he demanded both US military and commercial ships be given free passage through the Panama and Suez canals – claiming they would 'not exist' without the US.
One person taken aback by Mr Trump's allegations about the canal was Jorge Quijano, the former administrator of the Panama Canal Authority.
When he hosted Mike Pence and Mr Rubio during Mr Trump's first term, both men, he said, praised the canal and how the Panamanians were operating it – and made no mention of Chinese influence.
'The way he negotiates is like a magician, he has his hand here, but he's doing something else over here… I think his intention was always having military forces here,' he told The Telegraph.
Mr Quijano fears that the canal by nature is 'indefensible' and the only way to protect it is to 'keep it neutral'.
While some workers are supportive of Mr Trump, other Panamanians are so vehemently opposed they are willing to lay down their lives to stop him.
Sebastian King, special adviser for the union of marine engineers, can still remember the moment US troops tied his hands behind his back and held a rifle to his head during the US invasion of Panama in 1989.
Mr King accepted that China may have a 'soft fist influence' in countries in Latin America, but blamed the US for allowing China to win infrastructure projects by not putting in competitive bids for infrastructure projects.
'The people who think Trump is the answer to our problems are mistaken,' he said.