Panama Against Trump

“Opening Lower Guard Gates, Miraflores Locks, Panama Canal” (undated) | Unknown author / CC0 1.0

As Donald Trump prepared to take office in late 2024, the American president-elect issued a stunning threat: to “take back” the Panama Canal, almost a quarter century after the United States had returned control of the canal and the zone around it to the sovereign state of Panama. 

Once in office, Trump repeated his threat, promising to undo what had been a historic moment for Panama, a nation that since 2000 could point to the canal as the centerpiece of a future of dignity and sovereign development. 

Originally, Trump claimed that the fees Panama charged US ships to use the canal were too high. He then made exaggerated accusations that China had “taken over” the canal. (In reality, the Hong Kong–based company CK Hutchison at the time owned some ports along the canal.)

At first, Panama’s president, José Raúl Mulino, tried to placate Trump. His administration agreed to purge the country of Chinese technology and pressure CK Hutchison to sell its ports to a BlackRock-led consortium of American investors. He also signed a bilateral agreement with the US to clamp down on migration flows through the Darién Gap, as well as a memorandum of understanding that restored three US military bases on Panamanian territory.

Outraged by these humiliating concessions, as well as other, equally unpopular acts of the Mulino government, a growing number of Panamanians have taken to the streets in protest.

The current wave of unrest was initially sparked in March 2025 by the signing of Law 462, which overhauled the state health care and pension system, slashing benefits and taking steps toward privatization. In April, teachers’ unions launched an indefinite strike, demanding the repeal of the law, and they were soon followed by large sections of the Panamanian working class, notably the construction and banana workers’ unions. As protests grew, they incorporated other grievances with the administration, such as its decision to reopen a controversial copper mine, which had closed in 2023 after a previous wave of national protests.

As protests spread to several provinces and blockades of major roads disrupted the economy, the government began to resort to forceful and repressive measures. 

Notably, in the Bocas del Toro region in early June, Operation Omega deployed more than 1,300 police to clear roads blocked by protestors and to arrest union and student leaders active in the rebellion. When things only escalated, the government declared a state of emergency in the region, suspending constitutional rights, restricting movement and assembly, and dispersing protests through force. 

It was in this fraught context that President Mulino signed the memorandum of understanding allowing the US military to reopen bases along the canal. 

As a result, Mulino’s right-wing government finds itself in a bind. Strongly aligned with the nation’s business elite, Mulino is in no political position to walk back his neoliberal domestic policies. 

Instead, the government has tried a sector-specific approach to defusing protests, focusing on giving concessions to banana workers in Bocas del Toro. This has succeeded in creating enough stability to resume the harvesting of bananas for Chiquita, a Swiss corporation descended from the American-owned United Fruit Company, the original godfather of “banana republics.” 

While quelling some protests, the government still has not addressed the core issues of Law 462 or the simmering outrage over its capitulation to the Trump administration’s demands. 

The return of the US military to the Canal Zone recalls an ugly history. 

In 1964, 22 Panamanians were killed in conflicts with US soldiers stationed in the Canal Zone stemming from protests over the canal’s sovereignty and the flying of a Panamanian flag. In Panama, this incident is commemorated with a national day of mourning called Martyrs’ Day. 

Twenty-five years later, in 1989, the United States, acting under orders from President George H. W. Bush, invaded Panama to overthrow the country’s de facto ruler, General Manuel Noriega. The United Nations estimated that the operation killed 500 civilians, and the UN General Assembly voted to condemn it as a violation of international law. 

President Mulino is aware of this history. He claims to have rejected a previous agreement with the US for an even more extensive military presence, saying that it would “set the country on fire.” Yet it is well known that Mulino in the 1980s had lobbied the Bush administration to depose Noriega. 

In recent weeks, Panama has served as a vital base for a wider deployment of US forces to the Caribbean—ostensibly an anti-drug trafficking operation, but one that also poses a standing threat to the left-wing regime of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. As this tense situation escalates, with Trump brandishing videos of extralegal executions of supposed drug smugglers, Panamanians have grown more outraged with their nation’s complicity in this remilitarization of the region. 

At a September press conference, Panamanian social and labor organizations denounced the Mulino government’s submission to US imperialism. The organization ALBA Movimientos derided the concession of Panamanian sovereignty to a US project of consolidating power in what it sees as its backyard. Saúl Méndez, the leader of the National Union of Industrial, Construction, and Related Workers, spoke of previous Panamanians who had sacrificed their lives to fight for sovereignty of the canal, and of how their legacy was being tarnished. 

While the next presidential election is not until 2029, a poll in June showed that only 2.7 percent of Panamanians rated Mulino’s government as “good” or “very good.”José Isabel Blandón Figueroa, the leader of the country’s Panameñista Party, said of the Mulino administration: “I don’t think there’s a government in Latin America that has given in more [to Trump] than the Panamanian government.” 

It’s not clear yet if Mulino has the political skills and elite support to defuse an increasingly volatile situation. But with ongoing waves of protestors in the streets, alongside heightening regional tensions, Panama faces a political crisis with no clear resolution.