On January 15, the State Department released its “Agency Strategy Plan,” much of which mirrors the November National Security Strategy, but more deeply reveals the Donald Trump administration’s intentions for re-ordering US foreign policy. The new State Department plan bluntly elaborates the primacy of “vital chokepoints like the Panama Canal,” warning that the US “will no longer permit foreign adversaries to use commerce and investment as a stalking horse for control of the region’s critical infrastructure and strategic territory.” 

A Hong Kong-based company, CK Hutchison Holding, has been operating two Panama Canal ports since 1997. After Beijing enacted a national security law in 2020 that criminalized any Hong Kong actions deemed as collusion with foreign forces, Washington has been concerned about free passage, as 40 percent of all annual US trade with Asia sails through the vital chokepoint. In the event of a crisis, the Chinese Communist Party could order the Hong Kong company to deny US naval passage of destroyers, combat ships, and amphibious transport dock ships to support and reinforce Pacific Command fleet operations.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s first overseas trip was to Panama City, where he met with President José Raúl Mulino to express the United States’ insistence that the Chinese Communist Party’s control over the ports must end.

Panama later announced it would end its participation in China’s predatory Belt and Road Initiative, embedded in twenty countries throughout South America. 

Hutchison then announced it would sell its stake in the two canal ports, along........

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