Negotiating Sovereignty: America’s Imperialistic Panama Canal Rhetoric

In January 2025, during his inaugural address, President Donald Trump reignited a debate many assumed had been settled since 1999: who should control the Panama Canal? Framing the 1977 Torrijos Carter Treaties as a “foolish gift” and accusing China of covertly operating the canal, President Trump’s rhetoric of “taking back” the canal has drawn disapproval from Panama’s government, press, citizens, and scholars. Simultaneously, it has exposed unresolved questions about the waterway’s strategic value, the fairness of its treaties, and Chinese and U.S. influence in Latin America. This paper tracks the canal’s history, from French construction failure to the negotiated takeover in 1999, and contextualizes President Trump’s second term statements within the larger historical arc. Through historical sources, press coverage, and an original interview with leading Panamanian economist Adolfo Quintero, the paper argues that Trump’s current rhetoric is less a genuine bid to reoccupy the canal and rather a signal to limit Chinese influence in Panama. But, with this as a strategy, it reinstates the same disregard for Panamanian sovereignty that plagued Panama through the canal’s founding treaty and throughout U.S. control. It also presents as an unnecessary strategy, as the canal’s practical strategic and economic importance to the United States has diminished since the mid-twentieth century due to growth in transatlantic land transportation along with Panama’s own canal modernization, complicating claims that the canal is indispensable to U.S. national security. Even an unanticipated climate event, the 2023-2024 drought that forced Panama to cut canal transits in half, demonstrates that the canal's strategic value to the United States has faded and there is no cause for the U.S. to even want to “take it back.” Ultimately, this paper posits an alternative rationale for President Trump’s comments, one supported by both Professor Quintero’s views, and other studied experts on Latin America. China may have increased its economic influence in Latin America over the decades, and President Trump’s rhetoric reflects a real concern about that, but Panama’s sovereignty is intact, control over the canal is not open for negotiation, and imperialistic rhetoric from the United States that suggests Panama’s sovereignty is negotiable at the canal is misplaced.