Rep. Dusty Johnson (R-S.D.) will introduce a invoice that might authorize the president to buy the Panama Canal and put it beneath U.S. management, an acquisition that President-elect Trump has been pushing over the past a number of weeks.
Johnson plans to introduce the Panama Canal Repurchase Act on Thursday, The Hill has discovered.
“President Trump is right to consider repurchasing the Panama Canal. China’s interest in and presence around the canal is a cause for concern,” Johnson stated in an announcement. “America must project strength abroad – owning and operating the Panama Canal might be an important step towards a stronger America and a more secure globe.”
The invoice would authorize the president, in coordination with the secretary of State, to “initiate and conduct negotiations with appropriate counterparts of the Government of the Republic of Panama to reacquire the Panama Canal for the symbolic amount of $1,” in keeping with draft textual content shared with The Hill.
The $1 quantity is an obvious reference to a symbolic sale of the canal that was accompanied by quite a few different provisions within the Carter-Torrijos Treaties signed in 1977 that transferred management of the canal to Panama. Trump in December had complained that concerning the deal signed by former President Carter, saying that he “foolishly gave it away, for One Dollar.”
Trump on Tuesday refused to commit to not utilizing the U.S. navy to take management of the Panama Canal.
“I’m not going to commit to that. It might be that you have to do something,” Trump stated in a press convention from Mar-a-Lago in Palm Seaside, Fla. “Look, the Panama Canal is vital to our country, it’s being operated by China, China. And we gave the Panama Canal to Panama, we didn’t give it to China.”
Regardless of Johnson’s invoice, the concept of the U.S. taking management of the Panama Canal — in addition to buying Greenland — is dealing with skepticism from different Capitol Hill Republicans.
“I think he was speaking aspirationally,” Senate Armed Companies Committee Chair Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) stated not too long ago about Trump’s ambitions of taking management of the Panama Canal and Greenland.
