U.S. President-elect Donald Trump clearly does not intend to pursue a “good neighbor” policy.
He has been mocking Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau by calling him ‘governor’ while proclaiming that a country of 40 million people should become the 51st U.S. state. His first telephone conversation with Mexico’s new president, Claudia Scheinbaum, had to be followed by Scheinbaum politely saying that she had agreed to none of the terms Trump claimed that she had.
Now Trump is seeking to reopen a debate over control of the Panama Canal that was settled five decades ago. But here, Trump’s statements resonate with a powerful sentiment that long underpinned previous U.S. policy on the issue. After all, the Panama Canal was an American idea, the brainchild of Teddy Roosevelt at the start of the 20th century — and the U.S. has had difficulty letting go of it ever since.
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