Panama president calls Trump's talk of 'reclaiming' the Panama Canal a lie

PANAMA CITY (AP) — Panama President José Raúl Mulino on Wednesday accused U.S. President Donald Trump of lying when he said in his address to Congress that his administration was “reclaiming” the Panama Canal.

Trump was referencing a deal announced Tuesday for a consortium led by the U.S. investment management company BlackRock Inc. to buy a controlling stake in the company held by a Chinese group that operates ports at both ends of the Panama Canal.

Panama maintains that it has full control over the canal and that the Hong Kong-based group's operation of the ports did not amount to Chinese control over the waterway, and that therefore the sale to a U.S.-based company would not represent any U.S. “reclaiming” of the canal. Panama's government on Tuesday called the sale a private transaction.

Mulino in a message posted to X on Wednesday, rejected that the deal came about because of U.S. pressure. “I reject in the name of Panama and all Panamanians this new affront to the truth and our dignity as a nation,” he wrote. He accused Trump of “lying again.”

Trump has talked about retaking the Panama Canal since his campaign, arguing that the U.S. should have never turned control over to the Panamanians and that the U.S. was being overcharged for using it.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio met with Mulino in early February and insisted that China was exerting influence over the canal’s operations. The focus was the Chinese consortium running the ports. Panama rejected that China had any influence over canal operations.

“Cooperation between our governments passes through clear understandings in terms of issues of mutual interest,” Mulino wrote. “It doesn't have anything to do with 'reclaiming the canal' nor with tarnishing our national sovereignty."

In a filing, CK Hutchison Holding said Tuesday that it would sell all shares in Hutchison Port Holdings and in Hutchison Port Group Holdings to the BlackRock consortium in a deal valued at nearly $23 billion, including $5 billion in debt.

The deal has to be approved by Panama’s government.

The United States built the canal in the early 1900s as it looked for ways to facilitate the transit of commercial and military vessels between its coasts. Washington relinquished control of the waterway to Panama on Dec. 31, 1999, under a treaty signed in 1977 by President Jimmy Carter. Trump has claimed that Carter “foolishly” gave the canal away.

Frank Sixt, co-managing director of CK Hutchison, said in a statement that the transaction was “the result of a rapid, discrete but competitive process in which numerous bids and expressions of interest were received.”

“I would like to stress that the transaction is purely commercial in nature and wholly unrelated to recent political news reports concerning the Panama Ports,” Sixt said.