WASHINGTON (AP) — Secretary of State Marco Rubio embarks this weekend on his first overseas travel in place of business, heading to Central The us to press President Donald Trump’s best precedence — curtailing unlawful immigration — and convey the message that the U.S. desires to reclaim regulate over the Panama Canal regardless of intense resistance from regional leaders.
It’s an extraordinary vacation spot for the maiden voyage of The us’s best diplomat, whose predecessors have normally appreciated Europe or Asia for his or her preliminary outings. It displays now not most effective the private pastime that Rubio — the primary Hispanic to carry the country’s maximum senior Cupboard publish — has within the area but additionally the Trump management’s intent to focal point a lot of its overseas coverage power as regards to house.
“It’s no accident that my first trip abroad as secretary of state will keep me in the hemisphere,” Rubio wrote in The Wall Boulevard Magazine on Friday.
Restricting immigration and combating narcotics smuggling are main components of that effort, however every other key precedence will likely be curtailing China’s rising affect within the Western Hemisphere, crowned through reasserting U.S. regulate over the Panama Canal. The American-built canal was once became over to the Panamanians in 1999 they usually object strongly to Trump’s call for handy it again.
Mass migration, medication and adversarial insurance policies pursued through Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela have wreaked havoc, Rubio stated within the Magazine opinion piece. “All the while, the Chinese Communist Party uses diplomatic and economic leverage — such as at the Panama Canal — to oppose the U.S. and turn sovereign nations into vassal states.”
Marco Rubio, U.S. secretary of state, speaks all through a swearing-in rite in Washington, DC, US, on Tuesday, Jan. 21, 2025. (Photographer: Oliver Contreras/Sipa/Bloomberg by means of Getty Photographs)
Bloomberg by means of Getty Photographs
Certainly, Rubio’s first forestall at the five-nation excursion Saturday will likely be Panama, whose president, José Raúl Mulino, says there will likely be no negotiation with america over possession of the canal. He stated he was hoping Rubio’s consult with would as a substitute focal point on shared pursuits like migration and fighting drug trafficking.
“It’s impossible, I can’t negotiate,” Mulino stated Thursday. “The canal belongs to Panama.”
But Rubio stated he’s going to shed light on Trump’s intent. In an interview Thursday with SiriusXM host Megyn Kelly, he stated Trump’s want to retake regulate of the Panama Canal is pushed through legit nationwide safety pursuits stemming from rising considerations about Chinese language task and affect in Latin The us.
“We’re going to address that topic,” he stated. “The president’s been pretty clear he wants to administer the canal again. Obviously, the Panamanians are not big fans of that idea. That message has been brought very clear.”
Chinese language investments in ports and different infrastructure and amenities at each the Pacific and Caribbean ends of the canal are a reason for main worry, leaving Panama and the essential delivery direction prone to China, he stated.
Rubio added that “if China wanted to obstruct traffic in the Panama Canal, they could,” and that may be a contravention of the 1977 treaty signed through former President Jimmy Carter beneath which the U.S. later ceded regulate.
Regardless of Mulino’s rejection of any negotiation over possession, some consider Panama is also open to a compromise beneath which canal operations on either side are taken clear of the Hong Kong-based Hutchison Ports corporate that was once given a 25-year no-bid extension to run them. An audit into the suitability of that extension is already beneath method and may result in a rebidding procedure.
President of Panama José Raúl Mulino Quintero addresses the 79th consultation of the United International locations Common Meeting, Wednesday, Sept. 25, 2024. (AP Photograph/Pamela Smith)
What’s unclear is whether or not Trump would settle for the switch of the concession to an American or Ecu company as assembly his calls for, which seem to hide extra than simply operations.
“In some ways, Trump is pushing on an open door,” stated Ryan Berg, director of the Americas program on the Middle for Strategic and World Research, a Washington assume tank. “But it will depend on how his red lines are defined.”
“There’s been a lot of heavy rhetoric and it will be up Rubio to clarify it,” Berg stated, including that some more or less compromise was once imaginable “but we’ll have to see if he’s really serious about taking it back. If that’s the case then nothing short of that will satisfy him.”
Rubio will arrive in Panama on Saturday for conferences the next day to come with Mulino and the canal administrator. He’s going to then trip to El Salvador, Costa Rica, Guatemala and the Dominican Republic.
His arrival will come only a day after the U.S. resumed visa processing at its embassy in Bogota, Colombia, which have been close down Sunday after the Colombian govt refused to simply accept two planeloads of Colombian deportees from america.
Earlier secretaries of state have continuously traveled out of the country with so-called “deliverables” — help applications, new cooperation tasks and the like — that they are able to announce at every forestall. Then again, reminiscent of with Colombia, Rubio would possibly most effective be capable to convey restricted aid from a U.S. freeze on overseas help that Trump ordered pending a evaluate of all systems.
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In Latin The us, such systems have normally concerned about policing, counternarcotics operations and efforts to stem unlawful migration. Rubio has made provisions for sure systems providing life-saving help to be exempted from the investment pause, and waiver programs for systems in numerous of the international locations he’s going to be visiting are beneath evaluate.
A few of the international locations for which waivers for sure systems had been submitted are Panama, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic and its neighbor, Haiti. Despite the fact that Rubio might not be touring to Haiti, the State Division has already allowed some $41 million in fortify of a world peacekeeping pressure there to move forward.
