On April 28 the State Department issued a joint declaration “in solidarity with Panama” after a sudden spike in detentions of Panama-flagged vessels at Chinese ports, calling the actions “a blatant attempt to politicize maritime trade.” Alongside the United States, Costa Rica, Bolivia, Paraguay, Guyana, and Trinidad and Tobago signed the statement as Washington simultaneously pressed legal and diplomatic levers to reduce Chinese logistics influence around the Panama Canal.
That pressure followed an intense US–Panama campaign: bilateral security talks, a politically charged audit of Chinese concessions near the Canal, and a Panamanian Supreme Court ruling that removed port operator CK Hutchison and cleared the way for Danish company Maersk to take over. Those moves came after incendiary Trump-era rhetoric that even suggested retaking the Canal by force—comments that undercut Washington’s later assertions that it was defending Panama’s sovereignty and denouncing “politicization.”
The list of co-signatories is strategic, not accidental. Guyana has rapidly become a major light-crude producer and is attracting downstream investment as US measures constrict Gulf oil flows. Trinidad supplies petrochemicals such as urea and ammonia. Costa Rica runs one of the Caribbean’s most advanced ports. Paraguay remains one of the few South American governments that recognize Taiwan. Bolivia, at first glance the outlier, matters for its mineral wealth.
Bolivia holds the world’s largest lithium reserves, but commercial extraction is complicated by a high magnesium-to-lithium ratio that requires costly, technologically sophisticated processing. Logistics are also difficult: transporting lithium across rugged terrain to Chilean Pacific ports and then through the Panama Canal raises the price and strategic value of each ton. President Rodrigo Paz’s replacement of the head of the state lithium company signals a willingness to revisit deals struck with China and Russia if Western capital can guarantee broader market access. For Bolivia, endorsing a US-backed declaration on Panama is a low-friction diplomatic move that signals openness to Western-led logistics and trade channels in exchange for infrastructure and investment.
These diplomatic shifts occur alongside wider US actions: what critics describe as a de facto blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, new defense agreements across Asia, and overt pressure on port operations in Peru and other states. Taken together, these measures point to a coherent strategy—derisively labeled by opponents the “Donroe Doctrine”—aimed less at benign economic integration than at redirecting capital, supply chains, and maritime traffic away from West Asia and toward friendly partners in the Western Hemisphere. The apparent objective is to secure inputs for energy, agriculture, logistics, and emerging green industries—hydrocarbons, petrochemicals, and strategically important metals—through channels influenced by Washington.
This approach treats maritime routes and logistics hubs as instruments of geopolitical advantage rather than a neutral commons. Military seizures and blockades in West Asia, combined with diplomatic pressure and legal challenges in Central and South America, amount to a coordinated effort to shape trade flows to American strategic ends. In the short term that posture risks destabilizing the global maritime order and creating opportunities for other coastal and rising powers to exploit, but it also advances Washington’s near- and medium-term goal of rerouting critical commodities and supply chains through allied hemispheric partners.
Whether this strategy will succeed over the long run is unclear. In the immediate term, however, the campaign embodies a deliberate US effort to produce the very realignment of capital and trade that China and other competitors most feared: the reconstruction of maritime influence through a mix of legal, diplomatic, and military instruments to secure access to strategic resources and supply chains.
