Former US Ambassador to Panama Barbara Stephenson explains how a drought impacted the Panama Canal, leading to increased fees for shipping.
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00:00Is Donald Trump serious about taking back control of the Panama Canal?
00:06There's a bee in his bonnet. I think we can all see that.
00:09Now, exactly what he is on about and what he plans to do
00:14I think is a subject of a lot of discussion in Washington
00:18and certainly in our hemisphere.
00:21You know, I can certainly imagine a shipper of liquefied natural gas
00:26which goes from our Gulf ports through the Panama Canal to Asia
00:30in about the course of a month
00:32being alarmed in 2023 and 2024
00:36when the shipping tolls went up dramatically.
00:39And the answer to why that happened is that
00:42there was a severe drought in Panama
00:44and it's not a flat canal like Suez.
00:47It's a canal where the ships have to be lifted through locks with fresh water
00:51taken across the high part of the middle of the country
00:55drop down and then that fresh water goes out to the ocean with each passage.
00:59So it uses a lot of water to transit the ships through.