A tanker ship enters the Panama Canal on October 25, 2024. President-elect Donald Trump has raised the idea that the United States should regain ownership of the canal.
Martin Peretti/AFP via Getty Images
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Martin Peretti/AFP via Getty Images
Among the topics that President-elect Donald Trump chose to bring up in his social media posts on Christmas morning was the Panama Canal — a choice that is both startling and appropriate.
Astonishing, first, because the channel was not a prominent issue in the 2024 presidential campaign, nor was it in previous Trump campaigns. It was not a focus of his foreign policy during his first term as president, and in fact, it has not been prominent in American politics or political debates since the disco era.
But it was there, in the Social Truth post and then Pre-holiday speech in PhoenixTrump demanded that shipping rates through the canal be reduced or “we will demand that the Panama Canal be returned to us in full, quickly and without a doubt.”
surprising.
However, Trump bringing this up now makes some sense. It fits with Trump’s other promises and threats that underscore his “America First” slogan in US trade and foreign relations. The president-elect has long promoted the idea that the United States has been exploited, changed, and even pressured by allies and beneficiaries — not to mention rivals like China.
But tapping into this familiar reservoir of resentment with a specific reference to the Panama Canal also reminds us of a moment of enormous importance to the Republican Party and to the American experience of the past half-century.
Because there is an argument that the Panama Canal issue was the turning point in Ronald Reagan’s career as a presidential candidate. Without that, he would have been just another California governor whose dream of the White House did not come true.
An issue, a tactic, and a candidate come together
The year was 1976, Americans were celebrating the bicentennial, and they were experiencing a series of traumatic events. The Vietnam War arguably divided the country more dramatically than any conflict since the Civil War. The painful chapter ended badly, as the last American personnel rushed to helicopters on the roof of the US Embassy.
Former President Richard Nixon, elected in 1968 to “bring us together” and re-elected in 1972 by an overwhelming majority in 49 states, was caught up in a web of campaign crimes, lies and cover-ups that forced him to resign on the brink of impeachment in 1974. He was pardoned By his successor Gerald Ford.
Ford gave the country a bit of breathing room for a while as he looked toward the election itself. But inflation was on the rise in the 1976 election year, driven largely by energy prices that rose as the cost of imported oil rose. The economy was sluggish at best, and unemployment was well above 1960s levels. However, the ambitious young Republicans chose not to challenge one of their party’s incumbents.
Reagan’s calculations were different. He had just left the governorship of California the previous year and had the support of many Western and Southern party leaders as well as conservative activists. Reagan was also in his mid-60s, which at the time was seen as posing an “age question.” His brief bid for the Republican nomination in 1968 was too little, too late. The Bicentennial looked like it might be his last chance.
But Reagan had difficulty raising money against the incumbent president and was not in touch with party leaders in the early primary states. He lost in New Hampshire, Florida and three other early primaries. Its funding sources were drying up. Some in his camp were urging him to make up for his mistakes. In late March, political commentator William F. Buckley: “It appears that Ronald Reagan has lost his battle.” Another conservative columnist, James Kilpatrick, opined that Reagan’s campaign was “about to end.” Many Reagan associates and biographers have written that Reagan’s wife, Nancy, wanted him out to spare him embarrassment.
Instead, Reagan stuck to his guns. He was looking forward to the March 23 primary elections in North Carolina, a state in which he had the support of the state’s prominent senator, Jesse Helms, an icon of hardline conservatives. The joint campaign teams came up with a tactic and a case. They bought time on local television stations around the state and ran a pre-recorded speech that Reagan had previously given on the subject of the Panama Canal and the Ford administration’s plan to “abandon it.”
Why was the issue of the channel hesitant?
Most Americans learned little about the canal in school and rarely thought about it again. They knew it was a series of waterways across a narrow isthmus in Central America connecting the Atlantic and Pacific, saving weeks of sailing time between oceans. They may remember that the United States, under President Theodore Roosevelt, helped establish a friendly local government in Panama and took over the canal project that the French had abandoned (after injuries and diseases claimed the lives of about 20,000 workers).
But relatively few people then or now remember how the Canal Zone became the scene of anti-American agitation and unrest in the 1960s. For decades, presidents in both parties have moved negotiations with Panama toward eventual handover of the zone and operation of the canal, but that has yet to be accomplished. But in the middle of that decade, the mere suggestion of the “Giveaway in the Canal” as another American humiliation in the wake of Vietnam and Watergate was enough to incite US ire. He brought loud applause at Reagan events in the South. So, the campaign went all out in North Carolina.
The effect was electrifying. Reagan said the canal should not be ceded to Panama or anyone else. “We built it, we bought it, and we’re going to keep it,” he said. That was the language Helms used, citing senior state Sen. Strom Thurmond of neighboring South Carolina. Helms and Thurmond established a small but powerful group of southern senators who resisted talk of moving the canal to Panama.
The campaign run by Helms, Thurmond, and Reagan often included misinformation about the Panamanian government being “Marxist” and other claims. But it resonated with many Americans who saw the issue as a test of nationalism, even patriotism. Most importantly, it worked. When Republicans voted in North Carolina, they gave Reagan the majority and a six-point victory over Ford.
Overnight, the national narrative changed. The boring Republican primaries suddenly became a firebrand in the eyes of the media. Reagan’s coffers were full again. He took advantage of the Panama issue and North Carolina’s momentum to achieve victories in other Southern states, in Indiana, Nebraska, and in the West. By the time the conference met in Kansas City that summer, the rival had nearly closed the gap. Reagan then selected a moderate senator from Pennsylvania as his potential running mate in an attempt to rally that delegation, a move that cost him momentum and left him falling short.
Ford, in turn, was narrowly defeated in November 1976 by former Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter, a Democrat who moved quickly to seal the deal with Panama.
Giving up control of the canal was in fact a goal of Ford’s Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, a longtime advisor to former President Nixon. Kissinger saw the transfer of ownership of the canal as the best way to improve the United States’ position in Latin America generally. Carter did not accept the idea when he was a candidate, and he even said in his debate with Ford last October that he would not give up “practical control of the Panama Canal Zone at any time in the foreseeable future.” But after Election Day, under the influence of Cyrus Vance, his pick for Secretary of State, Carter changed his mind and gave the long-running negotiations new impetus.
The efforts of Helms, Thurmond, and others came close to denying the treaty the two-thirds vote it needed in the Senate. But in the end, Senate Republican Leader Howard Baker of Tennessee advanced enough of his colleagues to put the agreement over the top by one vote.
The relevant treaties were signed in September 1977.
Reagan remained opposed to the Panama Deal, but he “moderated his rhetoric significantly in 1977 when President Jimmy Carter finally signed the treaties,” according to Lou Cannon, a reporter and biographer who covered Reagan closely and longer than anyone else. in President Reagan: The role of a lifetime, Cannon reports “Reagan’s interest in the Panama Canal declined after the issue served its political purpose.” Cannon wrote that Reagan’s pollsters told him that the issue was primarily of concern to hard-line conservatives. By 1980, Reagan had closed this category.
Trump, then and now
There is no public record of Trump’s position on the Panama Treaties in the late 1970s. He likely opposed them at the time as a 30-year-old businessman trying to shift his real estate focus from Queens to Manhattan.
What is known is that Trump has proven to be at least as adept as Reagan at listening to the issues that excite the crowds at his rallies. The Panama case this week was part of a barrage of “America First” statements about asserting American interests abroad more forcefully during his second term. These included Trump’s renewed interest in acquiring the Arctic island of Greenland, a Danish property that is not for sale. In a perhaps less dramatic moment, Trump also included Canada on his Christmas wish list.
In this set of Trump’s statements, the reference to Panama seems most likely to get the most response from the audience at one of those rallies. You are more likely to keep the MAGA flame lit and the energy of the movement flowing.
And for now, the return to Panama also reminded us of Trump’s unparalleled ability to reframe the political conversation himself in the middle of the night.
Did he intend to reopen the canal debate and pressure Panama to lower US shipping tariffs? Is there a similar design behind Greenland’s demands? Or is there more to Canada than just a desire to troll Prime Minister Justin Trudeau?
It may become clear what kind of pressure Trump wants to exert on Panama – if any – when he returns to office. The issue may fade away for him as it did for Reagan. Other issues may intervene, as happened with Reagan.
Like his predecessor, Trump will know where to find a credible reason to voice the roar of the masses.
