this post was submitted on 05 Mar 2025
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In a statement announcing the business deal, Frank Sixt, co-managing director of CK Hutchison, said: "I would like to stress that the transaction is purely commercial in nature and wholly unrelated to recent political news reports concerning the Panama Ports."

BlackRock is one of the world's largest asset management companies.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago) (1 children)

Right, so while it does have its intended protectionist and national security benefits, it's at the cost of higher prices for everyone and thus a drag on the economy and subsidising the rail transport oligopoly.

Not sure how the Panama canal features into this tho, unless Trump follows through on annexing Panama, wouldn't it still be a foreign port for the purposes of the Jones act? And isn't that immaterial anyway when it's used as a transit point?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago)

Not sure how the Panama canal features into this tho, unless Trump follows through on annexing Panama, wouldn’t it still be a foreign port for the purposes of the Jones act? And isn’t that immaterial anyway when it’s used as a transit point?

Transiting the Panama Canal doesn't count as moving goods to Panama.

The Jones Act makes it more expensive to move goods by ship between locations in the US. If it went away, we would move more goods by ship between the US East Coast and US West Coast. That would make the Panama Canal abruptly a lot more valuable.

EDIT: Oh, I see what you mean. Maybe they didn't acquire any of the the infrastructure of the Canal itself, but just infrastructure for offloading stuff going to Panama, so ships transiting it wouldn't use what they acquired. I don't know that.

EDIT2: Yeah, looks like it:

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/blackrock-panama-canal-deal-ck-hutchison-trump/

In January, U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, the Republican chair of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, raised concerns that China could exploit or block passage through the canal and that the ports "give China ready observation posts" to take action. "This situation, I believe, posts acute risks for U.S. national security," Cruz said.

So he's raising the issue of China being near shipping moving through the Canal, not actually in its path. Probably right then.