by WorldTribune Staff, March 5, 2025 Real World News
A BlackRock investors group has agreed to buy majority stakes in Panama Canal ports currently under the control of a Chinese firm, a report said.
The investors plan to buy ports on both sides of the canal from Hong Kong-based CK Hutchinson for $22.8 billion, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday.
The Panama Canal is controlled by Panama, but foreign-owned ports on either side have been flagged as a threat by the Trump administration.
“China is operating the Panama Canal, and we didn’t give it to China,” President Donald Trump said in his inaugural address, referring to the 1977 treaty that handed control of it to Panama.
Under the current ownership structure, the Trump administration is concerned that China could use the ports for military purposes, including the monitoring of ship movement.
Related: Who needs the Panama Canal?, 1999
The BlackRock deal "would bring the key ports under American corporate ownership," the report said.
BlackRock, its new infrastructure arm Global Infrastructure Partners (GIP), and Geneva-based Terminal Investment agreed to acquire a 90% interest in Panama Ports, which owns and operates the ports of Balboa and Cristobal in Panama.
The consortium of investors also agreed to buy CK Hutchison’s controlling interest in 43 other ports in 23 countries.
"If completed, the BlackRock deal could go a long way toward easing concerns about China’s influence over the canal," the report said.
CK Hutchison said that the sale was part of a “competitive process in which numerous bids and expressions of interest were received.”
“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,” said Hutchison co-managing director Frank Sixt.
The United States built the Panama Canal, which opened in 1914, and relinquished it to Panama in late 1999 under a treaty negotiated more than 20 years earlier by then-President Jimmy Carter.
Trump has long said the deal was bad for the U.S. due to the exorbitant fees Panama charges and the Chinese infrastructure built up along the waterway.
Timely: Defund Fake News
