Panama, Greenland And The Delusions Of Trump-O-Nomics

Told you so. Donald Trump is wasting no time at all demonstrating that he is the same undisciplined, out-to-lunch motor mouth that was visited upon the nation last time around.

For crying out loud. He has spent the last several days promising an economic golden age he can’t possibly deliver, even as he shit-talks about Greenland, Canada and the Panama Canal. At today’s presser this insensible prattle reached the point where he refused to say whether or not he would actually send the Marines to invade Panama.

I’m not going to commit to that. It might be that you have to do something,” Trump said. “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.”

New York Times reporter David Sanger questioned the president-elect on if he can “assure the world” that “you are not going to use military or economic coercion.”

“No,” Trump replied.

Holy moly, this can’t be real. But it is!

Someone apparently told the Donald that the Panama Canal Authority is gouging American shippers and China may have something to do with it. Of course, neither is true.

Chinese companies have absolutely no role in the operations of the Panama Canal Authority. Nor did they fund the recent $5 billion expansion to accommodate more and larger ships. In all, the canal authority collects just $3.38 billion per year in tolls, which doesn’t amount to a hill of beans in the scheme of things.

Actually, the tolls averaged just $16 per ton against the 210 million long tons of cargo handled by the canal in FY 2024. So perhaps the Donald’s opinion is what—that the toll should be $13.50 or $9.25 per ton?

In fact, if the tolls were actually exploitive, the containers coming from the Far East and heading for the US Atlantic coast would divert to the Long Beach/Los Angeles Port and then go by train and truck to the east coast. Alas, they don’t at today’s $16 per ton charge because after the Teamsters, rail unions and Warren Buffet’s Union Pacific railroad eats their fill, it’s still cheaper to take the canal route and pay the tolls—the Donald’s new found monopolistic assessment or not.

More importantly, about 70% of the Panama Canal traffic is accounted for by US port originated or destined traffic. So call the annual charge to the US economy $2.4 billion, which amounts to barely $7.0 million per day.