The Panama Canal Has a Big Problem, but It’s Not China or Trump

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By Dennis M. Hogan, Guest Essay for The New York Times. 

Excerpt: In 2023, ...July, the middle of Panama’s rainy season. But the rains had been sparse, and water levels in the canal had sunk to troubling lows. Without freshwater from rain, our guide explained, the locks on the canal could not operate. ...the true threat to U.S. commerce through Panama. If the goal is securing affordable access to the transit point over the long term, it is climate change, not Chinese influence, that U.S. policymakers should worry about. ...Sending a single ship through the canal’s locks can use around 50 million gallons of water, mainly freshwater collected from Lake Gatún. Though the canal is, for the moment, operating at full capacity, a drier climate and greater demand for drinking water have in recent years reduced the volume of available water. That has forced the state-run Panama Canal Authority at times to limit the number of daily passages through the canal, at one point by as much as 40 percent. ...With less rain, the reservoirs fill up more slowly, which means less water available to operate the locks, which means fewer ships can pass. Hence, the 2023-24 drought, among the worst on record, slowed transits and drove up transit prices, causing long delays, more expensive consumer goods and greater instability in shipping routes. ...The limited number of passages has led to auctions for passage rights that further inflated the growing cost of shipping goods through the canal. (The canal authority increased tolls just before the 2023 drought began.) ... 

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