\n
Kicking off his five-nation tour of the region, Rubio is expected to tour Panama\u2019s strategic waterway and meet President Jose Raul Mulino on Sunday.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s no accident that my first trip abroad as secretary of state will keep me in the hemisphere,\u201d he wrote in a Wall Street Journal column on Friday, according to Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n
The canal is a crucial link between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans and coasts, with 40 percent of US container traffic going through it.<\/p>\n
Trump has refused to rule out military force to seize the Panama Canal, which the US handed over at the end of 1999, saying China has exerted too much control through its investment in surrounding ports.<\/p>\n
In his inaugural address last month, Trump said the US will be \u201ctaking it back\u201d, and refused to back down on Friday. \u201cThey\u2019ve already offered to do many things,\u201d Trump said of Panama, \u201cbut we think it\u2019s appropriate that we take it back.\u201d<\/p>\n
He alleged that Panama was taking down Chinese-language signs to cover up how \u201cthey have totally violated the agreement\u201d on the canal. \u201cMarco Rubio is going over to talk to the gentleman that\u2019s in charge,\u201d Trump told reporters.<\/p>\n
Rubio\u2019s mission also comes on the heels of Trump-imposed tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China, and the freezing of nearly all US foreign aid \u2013 moves that signal a far more aggressive foreign policy.<\/p>\n
MNA<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
\n
Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kicking off his five-nation tour of the region, Rubio is expected to tour Panama\u2019s strategic waterway and meet President Jose Raul Mulino on Sunday. \u201cIt\u2019s no accident that my first trip abroad as secretary of state will keep me in the hemisphere,\u201d he wrote in a Wall Street Journal column on Friday, according to Al …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22244,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[133],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22243","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world-north-america"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hamsonews.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22243","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hamsonews.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hamsonews.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hamsonews.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hamsonews.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22243"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hamsonews.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22243\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hamsonews.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22244"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hamsonews.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hamsonews.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hamsonews.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![](\"https:\/\/en.hamsonews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/2189945.jpg\")
<\/p>\n