On April 28 the State Department issued a joint statement “in solidarity with Panama” after a rise in detentions of Panama-flagged ships at Chinese ports, calling those detentions “a blatant attempt to politicize maritime trade.” That diplomatic note follows a broader U.S. campaign—legal, political, and economic—intended to displace Chinese logistics and port capital from Panama’s Balboa and Cristobal terminals. The dispute culminated in a Panamanian Supreme Court decision against port operator CK Hutchison, its subsequent eviction, and the handover of operations to a Maersk subsidiary.
These moves have unfolded alongside other strategic U.S. actions: constraining flows through the Strait of Hormuz, deepening defense ties with Indonesia, and publicly scrutinizing Peru’s Port of Chancay. The countries that co-signed the Panama statement—Costa Rica, Bolivia, Paraguay, Guyana, and Trinidad and Tobago—map neatly onto U.S. regional economic and security priorities. Guyana is rapidly scaling oil production and attracting investment; Trinidad is a significant petrochemical hub; Costa Rica hosts one of the Caribbean’s most advanced ports; Paraguay remains one of the few South American states recognizing Taiwan. Bolivia is particularly notable because of its vast lithium resources, a critical input for electric-vehicle batteries and grid storage.
Bolivia’s lithium presents technical and logistical challenges: a high magnesium-to-lithium ratio that requires costly, experimental extraction and processing, and the need to move exports long distances to Chilean Pacific ports and then through the Panama Canal. Those realities raise the per-ton value of shipments and make Bolivia especially receptive to offers that promise secure markets and dependable logistics. The recent replacement by President Rodrigo Paz of the head of the state lithium company Yacimientos de Litio Bolivianos signals a willingness to revisit prior deals with Chinese and Russian partners if Western capital and guaranteed market access are on offer.
For Bolivia, joining Washington’s Panama statement is a low-cost, transactional gesture that signals readiness to play by American-defined rules in exchange for logistical assurances from Panama and Chile. That step sits alongside U.S. actions in West Asia and the Caribbean: leveraging naval pressure, diplomatic channels, and lawfare to reconfigure who controls critical maritime infrastructure and routes.
Taken together, these moves illustrate what might be called the “Donroe Doctrine”: an effort not merely to integrate commerce benignly but to reroute capital, infrastructure, and trade away from West Asia and toward the Western Hemisphere. The aim is to create new maritime pathways and secure access to strategic inputs—energy, agricultural supplies, minerals and “green” commodities—under Western-dominated logistics and market arrangements. The State Department’s attempts to forge a maritime consensus with Latin American producers, many of whom have recently declined Chinese offers, appear designed to lock these inputs into Western supply chains.
Anyone who still believes the United States is a neutral guarantor of global maritime trade should reconsider. Washington’s naval and diplomatic posture—seizing or interdicting ships in West Asia while pressing China to respect U.S.-shaped rules in the Americas—reveals a selective enforcement of maritime norms. As the U.S. stepped back from the Carter Doctrine’s broad assurances for the Persian Gulf, the idea of a truly global maritime commons began to erode.
In the long term, that retreat could empower China and other regional powers able to consolidate influence where U.S. security guarantees are less consistent. In the short term, however, the resulting disorder in maritime governance creates openings the United States appears eager to exploit to secure energy, agricultural, and mining inputs for its industries and allies.
