Secretary of State Marco Rubio appeared to escalate the Trump administration’s confrontation with Panama on Sunday, telling its leader that President Trump had determined that Chinese “influence and control” over the Panama Canal threatens the waterway and demanding “immediate changes,” according to the State Department.
Panama’s president, José Raúl Mulino, provided a different account of the discussion, saying after the meeting that he did not believe Mr. Rubio had conveyed a threat that Mr. Trump might move to reclaim the American-built shipping route. He said he saw little risk of such an intervention.
But President Trump, speaking to reporters at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland about the canal on Sunday, said that “we’re going to take it back, or something very powerful is going to happen.”
The State Department’s summary of the meeting in Panama City, Mr. Rubio’s first with a foreign leader since becoming secretary of state, struck a tone that was sometimes aggressive. It said Mr. Rubio had told his host that Mr. Trump had made a “preliminary determination” that China’s government exercised control over the canal.
“Secretary Rubio made clear that this status quo is unacceptable and that absent immediate changes, it would require the United States to take measures necessary to protect its rights under the treaty,” the State Department spokeswoman, Tammy Bruce, said in the summary.
Ms. Bruce did not specify what those measures might be. Asked last month whether he would rule out putting military force behind his threats to reclaim the canal, which the U.S. controlled for nearly a century, Mr. Trump declined to do so.