Rep. Dusty Johnson (R-S.D.) will introduce a invoice that will authorize the president to buy the Panama Canal and put it below U.S. management, an acquisition that President-elect Trump has been pushing during the last a number of weeks.
Johnson plans to introduce the “Panama Canal Repurchase Act” on Thursday, The Hill has discovered.
“President Trump is right to consider repurchasing the Panama Canal. China’s interest in and presence around the canal is a cause for concern,” Johnson stated in a press release. “America must project strength abroad – owning and operating the Panama Canal might be an important step towards a stronger America and a more secure globe.”
The invoice would authorize the president, in coordination with the Secretary of State, to “initiate and conduct negotiations with appropriate counterparts of the Government of the Republic of Panama to reacquire the Panama Canal for the symbolic amount of $1,” in keeping with draft textual content shared with The Hill.
The $1 quantity is an obvious reference to a symbolic sale of the canal that was accompanied by quite a few different provisions within the Carter-Torrijos Treaties signed in 1977 that transferred management of the canal to Panama. Trump in December had complained that in regards to the deal signed by former President Carter, saying that he “foolishly gave it away, for One Dollar.”
The invoice additionally directs the president to submit a report back to Congress inside 180 days of passage “detailing the progress of the negotiations” in addition to the “potential challenges” and “anticipated outcomes.” Fox Information first reported Johnson’s plans to introduce the invoice.
Trump on Tuesday refused to commit to not utilizing the U.S. army to take management of the Panama Canal.
“I’m not going to commit to that. It might be that you have to do something,” Trump stated in a press convention from Mar-a-Lago. “Look, the Panama Canal is vital to our country, it’s being operated by China, China. And we gave the Panama Canal to Panama, we didn’t give it to China.”
Regardless of Johnson’s invoice, the thought of the U.S. taking management of the Panama Canal — in addition to buying Greenland — is going through skepticism from different Capitol Hill Republicans.
“I think he was speaking aspirationally,” Senate Armed Companies Committee Chair Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) stated just lately about Trump’s ambitions of taking management of the Panama Canal and Greenland.
