“"We've already started doing it. We're taking it back." [the Panama Canal]”

Panama never agreed. Its president publicly rejected the claim as false. Panama's government formally rejected Trump's "taking back" pledge in January 2025, declaring the canal's sovereignty and ownership non-negotiable, and President José Raúl Mulino said in March 2025 that Trump was "lying" about reclaiming the canal.

The canal is owned and operated by the Republic of Panama under the 1977 Torrijos-Carter Treaties, run by the Panama Canal Authority since the 1999 handover. No treaty, agreement, or transfer of any kind returning the canal to U.S. control has ever been signed. The only real transaction Trump's claim leans on was a private commercial deal, a BlackRock-led consortium's purchase of port concessions from Hong Kong-based CK Hutchison at either end of the canal, which Mulino explicitly said did not put the canal "in the process of recovery" by the United States. By January 2026, Mulino declared the canal crisis with the U.S. over, with the waterway still entirely Panamanian.

"The canal is not in the process of recovery." — Panamanian President José Raúl Mulino, rejecting Trump's framing, March 2025