President Donald Trump said on April 26 that America’s military and commercial ships should be allowed to pass through the Panama and Suez canals “free of charge.”
“Those Canals would not exist without the United States of America,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform. “I’ve asked Secretary of State Marco Rubio to immediately take care of, and memorialize, this situation!”
Stretching across the isthmus that connects North to South America, the Panama Canal allows ships to quickly traverse between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, carrying roughly 40 percent of U.S. container traffic yearly.
American and British leaders and businessmen discussed plans for building the canal throughout the 1800s as a way to quickly and cheaply transport goods without having to travel around the southern tip of South America to get between the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. The United States built the canal between 1903 and 1914....
