Teddy Roosevelt once declared the Panama Canal “one of the feats to which the people of this republic will look back with the highest pride.” More than a century later, Donald Trump is threatening to take back the waterway for the same republic.
The president-elect is decrying increased fees Panama has imposed to use the waterway linking the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. He says if things don’t change after he takes office next month, “We will demand that the Panama Canal be returned to the United States of America, in full, quickly and without question.”
Trump has long threatened allies with punitive action in hopes of winning concessions. But experts in both countries are clear: Unless he goes to war with Panama, Trump can’t reassert control over a canal the U.S. agreed to cede in the 1970s.
Here’s a look at how we got here:
What is the canal?
It is a man-made waterway that uses a series of locks and reservoirs over 51 miles (82 kilometers) to cut through the middle of Panama and connect the Atlantic and Pacific. It spares ships having to go an additional roughly 7,000 miles (more than 11,000 kilometers) to sail around Cape Horn at South America’s southern tip.
The U.S. International Trade Administration says the canal saves American business interests “considerable time and fuel costs” and enables faster delivery of goods, which is “particularly significant for time sensitive cargoes, perishable goods, and industries with just-in-time supply chains.”
Who built it?
An effort to establish a canal through Panama led by Ferdinand de Lesseps, who built Egypt’s Suez Canal, began in 1880 but progressed little over nine years before going bankrupt.
Malaria, yellow fever and other tropical diseases devastated a workforce already struggling with especially dangerous terrain and harsh working conditions in the jungle, eventually costing more than 20,000 lives, by some estimates.
Panama was then a province of Colombia, which refused to ratify a subsequent 1901 treaty licensing U.S. interests to build the canal. Roosevelt responded by dispatching U.S. warships to Panama’s Atlantic and Pacific coasts. The U.S. also prewrote a constitution that would be ready after Panamanian independence, giving American forces “the right to intervene in any part of Panama, to re-establish public peace and constitutional order.”
In part because Colombian troops were unable to traverse harsh jungles, Panama declared an effectively bloodless independence within hours in November 1903. It soon signed a treaty allowing a U.S.-led team to begin construction.
Some 5,600 workers died later during the U.S.-led construction project, according to one study.
Why doesn’t the US control the canal anymore?
