A group of investors led by BlackRock will acquire two ports near the Panama Canal that are owned by CK Hutchison and have become the subject of a dispute between President Trump and Panama.
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President Trump spent weeks hammering Panama over its most prized asset, the Panama Canal, claiming without evidence that China was exploiting the waterway. It seemed as if Panama could not shake off Washington.
Wall Street intervened on Tuesday.
An investment group led by BlackRock, the giant US asset manager, said it had agreed to buy two ports in Panama owned by a Hong Kong company at the centre of tensions between Panama and Mr Trump.
BlackRock will buy the ports on both sides of the canal and more than 40 others from Hong Kong conglomerate CK Hutchison for about $19 billion. While Mr. Trump has other complaints about the canal — he says it charges too many tolls — the deal significantly eases the pressure on Panama, political analysts say.
“This is an elegant way out of a seemingly intractable crisis,” said Benjamin Gedan, director of the Latin American program at the Wilson Center.
The deal is also a sign of the spoils available to American companies as the Trump administration pursues its “America First” foreign policy. And for some historians, it evokes memories of the outsized power that Wall Street banks wielded in Latin America.
“Where are the Panamanian voices here?” said Peter James Hudson, an associate professor at the University of British Columbia and the author of “Bankers and Empire: How Wall Street Colonized the Caribbean.” “They’re completely lost in this larger story of Trump’s efforts.”
