Hong Kong-A conglomerate based in Hong Kong agreed to sell his participation in two ports of the Panama Canal to US and Swiss investors amid the Trump administration pressure on the ties of the ports with China.
CK Hutchison, a conglomerate founded by Hong Kong billionaire, Li Ka-Shing, has in principle to sell its control participation in a unit that operates the two ports to a consortium that includes the US asset manager. UU. Blackrock, the companies said on Tuesday.
President Donald Trump had argued that the ports supported by Chinese, one in the Pacific and Atlantic entries of the channel, raised a national security threat because they gave Chinese military control of the strategically vital channel.
Although CK Hutchison said the proposed sale was not related to politics, Trump promoted him as a victory in his speech on Tuesday night at a joint session of Congress.
“My administration will claim the Panama Canal, and we have already begun to do it,” he said. “Just today, a large American company announced that they are buying both ports around the Panama Canal.”
Almost 15,000 ships from all over the world of transit every year through the Panama Canal, which was mainly built with US funds and was completed in 1914. Around two thirds of them are directed towards or from the United States.
In 1999, the United States resigned from the control of the channel to Panama under a treaty negotiated by President Jimmy Carter and ratified by the Senate in 1978, with the United States retaining the permanent right to defend the channel against any threat to its neutrality.
Trump has affirmed without evidence that China controls the Panama Canal. He said he would consider using the military force to turn it off of Panama, one of Washington’s closest allies in Latin America.
“We didn’t give it to China,” Trump told Congress on Tuesday. “We gave it to Panama and we are recovering it.”
Both China and Panama deny that there is some foreign interference on the 50 mile channel, whose neutrality is enshrined in the Panama Constitution.
“China supports Panama’s sovereignty on the channel and undertakes to maintain its permanently neutral international river status,” China’s foreign ministry spokesman said Wednesday in a regular informative session in Beijing on Wednesday.
“China has never participated in the management or operation of the channel, nor has interfered in its affairs,” he said.
The Trump administration and the members of the Congress were informed about the proposed agreement of $ 22.8 billion, said a person familiar with the issue to NBC News.
The consortium, which also includes the Mediterranean shipping company based in Geneva, would obtain control of an 80% interest in the CK Hutchison Hutchison Ports subsidiary, which operates 43 ports in 23 countries. It would also receive 90% of Panama’s ports, which operates the port of Balboa on the Pacific side of the Canal and the Port of Cristóbal on the Atlantic side.
It does not affect the company’s ports in China.
“I would like to emphasize that the transaction is purely commercial and totally not related to recent political news reports on Panama’s ports,” said Frank Sixt, co-administrator director of CK Hutchison, in a press release.
The news sent CK Hutchison almost 22% on Wednesday at Hang Kong Hang Seng index.
The control over the Panama Canal has been a high profile approach to the Trump administration, with Marco Rubio making Panama part of his first foreign trip as Secretary of State.
Hutchison Ports won the rights to administer the two ports of the Panama Canal in 1997 in a bidding process that was described as fair and non -discriminatory by US officials at that time. In 2021, his contract extended until 2047.
Although the two ports sit at the opposite ends of the Panama Canal, the ships do not have to pass through them to enter. Other ports along the channel are operated by companies in Taiwan, Singapore and the United States
The ports serve mainly to handle the load, while the channel itself is led by the Panama Canal Authority, an independent government agency of Panamana.
Although CK Hutchison is a private company based in Hong Kong, a semi -autonomous Chinese territory, Trump administration officials had argued that he was subject to Beijing’s control, which has been hardening his control over the city.
The potential sale, which is subject to regulatory approval, was first informed by the Wall Street Journal.
