Marco Rubio heads Saturday to Panama on his debut trip abroad as US secretary of state as he looks for how to follow up on President Donald Trump’s extraordinary threat to seize the Panama Canal.
Rubio has played down the military option but also not contradicted his boss.
“Marco Rubio is going over this talk to the gentleman in charge,” Trump told reporters.
“I think the president’s been pretty clear he wants to administer the canal again. The Panamanians are not big fans of that idea,” Rubio told in an interview before the trip.
He acknowledged that Panama’s government “generally is pro-American” but said that the Panama Canal is a “core national interest for us.”
“We cannot allow any foreign power — particularly China — to hold that kind of potential control over it that they do. That just can’t continue,” Rubio said.
Rubio’s travel comes the same day that Trump’s promised tariffs on the three largest US trading partners — Canada, Mexico, and China — are set to go into effect, another step showing a far more aggressive US foreign policy.
