The Daily Fuckup

Donald Trump managed to pick a fight with Panama before he has even taken the oath of office again, using a victory-lap rally in Phoenix to float the idea that the United States might try to take back the Panama Canal. The line landed with the sort of force Trump usually aims for: blunt, triumphant, and built to produce applause. It also carried the kind of diplomatic baggage that tends to arrive all at once when he turns a foreign-policy grievance into a stage line. Trump told supporters that the U.S. had “foolishly” given up control of the canal and complained that shippers were paying “ridiculous” fees to use it. What may have sounded to his audience like a swaggering defense of American interests read to everyone else like an off-the-cuff test balloon about revisiting one of the clearest symbols of Panamanian sovereignty.

The Panama Canal is not a decorative grievance or a forgotten artifact from a past era. It is one of the world’s most important commercial passageways, linking the Atlantic and Pacific oceans and sparing global shipping the long, costly route around South America. That makes it a strategic asset with enormous economic significance far beyond the United States and Panama. The canal has been under Panamanian control for decades, and that arrangement is part of the modern international order, not a temporary bargain waiting for a future president to rewrite it by force of personality. Trump’s remarks suggested he sees the matter as both unfair and reversible, as though a new administration could simply decide that enough pressure, enough leverage, or enough bluster might undo a settled reality. But sovereignty is not a campaign slogan, and the ownership of a major transit route is not something that can be reclaimed with a few loud lines delivered to a cheering crowd.

Panama’s response came quickly, which was exactly what the moment demanded. The country’s president rejected the idea, making clear that the canal is not up for political theater or casual revisionism. That was never likely to be a subtle answer, because there is nothing subtle about a foreign leader suggesting that a sovereign nation’s control of a national asset should be “taken back” by the United States. Even if Trump intended the comments as leverage or as a negotiating posture, the effect was to insult a partner and open a fresh diplomatic wound. The episode also underscored the familiar tension in Trump’s approach to foreign affairs, where grievance, dominance, and performance often blur together into one impulsive package. He has long favored the language of one-sided deals, coercion, and winners versus losers, but the canal is not a real-estate dispute, and Panama is not a counterparty that can simply be bullied into surrendering a core element of its sovereignty.

The larger problem is not just that the comments were provocative; it is that they once again showed how quickly Trump turns major international questions into domestic theater. In Phoenix, the canal became a prop in a familiar performance: a distant issue folded into a claim that America has been shortchanged, with the promise that a stronger Trump can fix it. That kind of framing may resonate with supporters who want confrontation and certainty, but it also risks misunderstanding the limits of American power and the realities of diplomacy. For many in Latin America, talk of the United States “regaining” the canal inevitably evokes a much older history of U.S. pressure and dominance, which gives the rhetoric a particularly sharp edge. The point is not that Trump announced a formal policy change or issued a binding threat; it is that he casually stepped into one of the most sensitive sovereignty questions in the hemisphere and treated it as if it were just another complaint to be aired at a rally. If the goal was to sound forceful, he succeeded in creating noise. If the goal was to look presidential, the result was far less convincing, because what came through was not strategy so much as improvisation, applause-seeking, and a willingness to reopen old disputes for the sake of a few more cheers.