Incoming US president Donald Trump on Saturday slammed what he called unfair fees for US ships passing through the Panama Canal and threatened to demand control of the waterway be returned to Washington. He also hinted at China’s growing influence around the canal, a worrying trend for American interests as US businesses depend on the channel to move goods between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. The Panama Canal, which was completed by the United States in 1914, was returned to the Central American country under a 1977 deal signed by Democratic president Jimmy Carter. Panama took full control in 1999.
Canadians might be relieved to learn that the president-elect would not be sending the military to their sovereign land. Unlike the canal, he said he’d only use economic force to annex the democratic country to the north and make it the 51st state.
Renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America may be a strategy to divert his lack of ideas on executing campaign promises such as reducing groceries prices, but asking Denmark to cede Greenland to the USA may be a bridge too far even for the Greenlanders.
America has elected a president who cares nothing about his own ethics and the opinions of the world. His insistence on measuring everything on financial grounds and cost benefit analysis should allow current Myanmar government to ‘carpe diem’ for the next couple of years at least.
