Panama President replies but Donald Trump firm on Panama Canal

Panama President José Raúl Mulino responded to US President-elect Donald Trump’s statement that the US is getting “ripped off” at the Panama Canal. 

In a video, Mulino said that “every square metre of the canal belongs to Panama and will continue to.” He further said, “The tariffs are not set on a whim.” “Panamanians may have different views on many issues. But when it comes to our canal, and our sovereignty, we will all unite under our Panamanian flag," he said also mentioning that an increase in fee helps in revenue for improvement. 

Trump fired back on his social media site, “We'll see about that!” The president-elect also posted a picture of a US flag planted in the canal zone under the phrase, “Welcome to the United States Canal!” The United States built the canal in the early 1900s but relinquished control to Panama on December 31, 1999, under a treaty signed in 1977 by President Jimmy Carter. 

The canal depends on reservoirs that were hit by 2023 droughts that forced it to substantially reduce the number of daily slots for crossing ships. With fewer ships, administrators also increased the fees that shippers are charged to reserve slots to use the canal. 

First it was Canada, then the Panama Canal. Now, Donald Trump also wants Greenland. 

The president-elect is renewing unsuccessful calls he made during his first term for the US to buy Greenland from Denmark, adding to the list of allied countries with which he's picking fights even before taking office on January 20. 

In a Sunday announcement naming his ambassador to Denmark, Trump wrote that, “For purposes of National Security and Freedom throughout the World, the United States of America feels that the ownership and control of Greenland is an absolute necessity." Trump again having designs on Greenland comes after the president-elect suggested over the weekend that the US could retake control of the Panama Canal if something isn't done to ease rising shipping costs required for using the waterway linking the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. 

He's also been suggesting that Canada become the 51st US state and referred to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as “governor” of the “Great State of Canada.” Greenland, the world's largest island, sits between the Atlantic and Arctic oceans. It is 80 per cent covered by an ice sheet and is home to a large US military base. It gained home rule from Denmark in 1979 and its head of government, Múte Bourup Egede, suggested that Trump's latest calls for US control would be as meaningless as those made in his first term. 

“Greenland is ours. We are not for sale and will never be for sale,” he said in a statement. “We must not lose our years-long fight for freedom.” Trump cancelled a 2019 visit to Denmark after his offer to buy Greenland was rejected by Copenhagen, and ultimately came to nothing. 

“If the principles, both moral and legal, of this magnanimous gesture of giving are not followed, then we will demand that the Panama Canal be returned to the United States of America, in full, quickly and without question,” he said. 

The Greenland and Panama flareups followed Trump recently posting that “Canadians want Canada to become the 51st State" and offering an image of himself superimposed on a mountaintop surveying surrounding territory next to a Canadian flag. 

Trudeau suggested that Trump was joking about annexing his country, but the pair met recently at Trump's Mar-a-Lago club in Florida to discuss Trump's threats to impose a 25 per cent tariff on all Canadian goods. 

Inputs from AP