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United States President Donald Trump said U.S. military and commercial ships should be allowed to travel free of charge through the Panama and Suez canals, two strategic routes for global trade and military operations.
“Those Canals would not exist without the United States of America,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social late Saturday. “I’ve asked Secretary of State Marco Rubio to immediately take care of, and memorialize, this situation,” Trump added. Trump has repeatedly criticized Panama’s management of the canal through that country and has floated plans to take back the waterway, refusing to rule out military force in doing so.
The canal was constructed by the U.S. in the early 1900s and ceded back to Panama in 1977.
In December, Trump accused China of expanding its influence in the management of the Panama Canal and slammed officials for charging “exorbitant prices and rates of passage.” The Panama Canal connects the Caribbean Sea with the Pacific Ocean. The Suez Canal connects the Mediterranean Sea with the Red Sea.
Both are essential for global commerce, cutting down shipping time and costs, while also giving militaries a quick way to move between oceans, strengthening geopolitical influence. Panama’s President José Raúl Mulino responded on X, without naming Trump, that the “transits and costs of all vessels through our Canal” are regulated by the Panama Canal Authority (ACP), an autonomous governing body. “There is no agreement to the contrary,” Mulino said.
Trump trade war pushes firms to consider stockpiling: Whether it’s the luxury, electronics or pharmaceutical sectors, US President Donald Trump’s unpredictability complicates the calculations of firms. Some companies didn’t wait for Trump’s April 2 announcement of massive “reciprocal” trade tariffs: they had already begun shipping more of their goods to the United States. In the end, Trump backed down quickly on the “reciprocal” tariffs, pausing them for 90 days except for China.
That still left the global 10 percent tariff in place, as well as the 25 percent tariffs on European steel, aluminium and cars. French cosmetics firm Clarins didn’t hesitate and stepped up shipments to the United States at the beginning of the year. “We’ve built up three months of stocks, which represents $2 million in goods,” said Lionel Uzan, the head of Clarins’s US operations.
With all of its products made in France, Clarins had few other options to mitigate the tariffs. Even if they don’t all acknowledge it so openly, firms in many different sectors are stockpiling their products in the United States. In March, exports of Swiss watches to the United States jumped nearly 14 percent compared to the same month last year.
More striking is Ireland, which plays host to a number of international pharmaceutical firms. Its exports to the United States jumped 210 percent in February to nearly 13 billion euros ($14.8 billion), with 90 percent of those being pharmaceutical products and chemical ingredients.
Fermob, a French manufacturer of metal garden furniture that sells around 10 percent of its products in the United States, said it began planning for US tariffs once the result of the presidential election became known in November. It stepped up production in January and February. “We’ve sent around 30 percent of our extra stock to the United States,” said the company’s chief executive, Baptiste Reybier.
That extra production has benefitted transportation firms. Lufthansa Cargo said it has seen in recent weeks “an increase in demand for shipments to the United States”. The trade war “has incited companies to accelerate certain stages in their supply chains”, it told AFP.
“A similar trend was seen for the delivery of cars from the EU to the United States,” it said. The phenomenon also concerns US-made goods. The Japanese newspaper Nikkei reported recently that Chinese tech firms were snapping up billions of dollars of artificial intelligence chips made by US firm Nvidia in anticipation of Washington imposing export restrictions.
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