S8 Ep572: 5. Professor Evan Ellis of the US Army War College details the geopolitical struggle over Panama’s ports, where an interim contract was awarded to an American-affiliated company after a Chinese-owned operator’s lease was ruled unconstitutional. He discuss
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 12 March 2026
⏱️ 13 minutes
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Summary
5. Professor Evan Ellis of the US Army War College details the geopolitical struggle over Panama’s ports, where an interim contract was awarded to an American-affiliated company after a Chinese-owned operator’s lease was ruled unconstitutional. He discusses the Chinese government's retaliation, which includes suspending services and threatening that Panama will pay a "heavy price" for the decision. Ellis also examines migration policies impacting Haitians in the U.S., noting that the removal of Temporary Protected Status (TPS)could return vulnerable people to a nation plagued by violence. (5)
1866 PANAMA
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm John Bachelor, and this is the New World Report. |
| 0:18.9 | I welcome Professor Evan Alice, U.S. Army |
| 0:22.1 | War College, Strategic Studies Institute, to take us through the Americas where there's |
| 0:28.6 | electioneering, there are also contracts, there are also unanswered questions about violence. |
| 0:36.0 | Evan, a very good day to you. I begin with Panama, a story we covered |
| 0:40.0 | heavily in 25 and have not addressed to my satisfaction right now with the changing direction |
| 0:47.7 | of the contracts and ownership of two ports, one on either side of the canal. I'm lost in this, but as I understand it, it came to a |
| 0:57.4 | contest between the People's Republic of China and capitalism represented by a billionaire, |
| 1:05.0 | but at the same time represented by the United States. Those contracts, where are they? What's |
| 1:10.2 | happened to them? Because I saw news |
| 1:12.1 | recently that the unfinished business here is ahead of us and the previous Chinese owners and |
| 1:20.1 | their masters in Beijing are very unhappy. Good day to you. |
| 1:24.4 | Day to you, John. Well, Panama is in an intermediate state right now, essentially working to keep the ports open while the People's Republic of China threatens reprisals and tries to implement reprisals over what's been done. As you alluded to a little bit of the backstory, going back to 1999 when Panama got control of the canal. One of the first things |
| 1:47.6 | that it did controversially was to give a concession for 25 years to operate two of the now |
| 1:54.4 | five major ports there in the canal zone to Hong Kong-based Hutchison Wampoa. That contract was renewed in 2021 under very |
| 2:04.8 | suspicious circumstances. I was actually there doing research at the time. And the general |
| 2:09.5 | kind of joke was that somebody must have paid off somebody to essentially get a contract |
| 2:14.5 | that was so lucrative for Hutchison. Go up into the future with |
| 2:18.3 | President Trump coming into office, giving particular attention to Chinese influence more broadly |
| 2:23.1 | in Panama. And essentially, in the face of U.S. pressure, the current government of Panama of |
| 2:29.5 | Jose Romilino went back and did a investigation according to due legal processes that not surprisingly |
| 2:38.9 | found that that contract in 2021, which had renewed Hutchison's 25-year lease, was not only |
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