Central America

“I reject in the name of Panama and all Panamanians this new affront to the truth and our dignity as a nation,” President José Raúl Mulino wrote on X on Wednesday.

Early this month, Trump suggested he would consider using military force to regain control of the canal from Panama, one of the U.S.’s closest allies in Latin America, describing it as “vital” for national security.

According to The Panama Canal Authority, the autonomous entity that operates it, the Canal constitutes an inalienable patrimony of the Panamanian nation, therefore it cannot be sold, assigned, or mortgaged.

The U.S. helped engineer Panama’s independence from Colombia to build the canal, which opened in 1914. But it ceded control to Panama in 1999.