Ep. 2130 - TRADE WAR and Naked Grammys!
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Well, folks, it was a very hot weekend in the news. President Trump has made some significant gains with regard to the Panama Canal. So President Trump has been issuing a lot of threats over the Panama Canal, which, of course, was built by the United States back in the early 20th century, late 19th century. And President Trump has wanted to maintain control over the Panama Canal. It was handed over to the Panamanian government by Jimmy Carter. And that Final facilitation of transfer happened in the 1990s over the course of time. And in the meantime, the Chinese have been using extraordinary power bribery, graft in order to take control of two ends of the Panama Canal. We have here a map of the Panama Canal.
The Panama Canal is really important because it cuts down shipping time across the bottom of South America by 27 days. It allows instead all sorts of shipping traffic to be pushed through Panama. It's an amazing thing. I've been down to Panama. I've seen the Panama Canal in person. It has its locks on both ends. The water level is increased and lowered in order to facilitate shipping. You have to pay a fee in order to go through if you are a shipper or if you are the U.S. military. Apparently, one of the victories that President Trump has now won is that some of the fees will be gone for U.S. military shipping across the Panama Canal. What you can see in this map. There are two sites on this map that are really important for folks who can't see it.
Panama, of course, is a very narrow bridge of land, a spit of land that exists between North America and South America. And the Panama Canal carves across some parts of that spit of land to create a free-flowing waterway that goes between the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean. Balboa, which is on the Pacific coast of the Panama Canal, is controlled by the Chinese. At least they have a site there that is controlled by the Chinese. They were attempting originally to actually put their embassy on that part of the Panama Canal. a subsidiary of CK Hutchinson Holdings, which is a Chinese-run company out of Hong Kong, controls that port. They also control the Cristobal Port, which is on the Atlantic side of the Panama Canal. Why is that a concern?
Well, the concern was that in case of some sort of serious conflict between the United States and China, the Chinese could use those cutout companies to basically obstruct traffic in the Panama Canal, preventing American warships from being able to transit that port at a stretch of one day or two days, as opposed to 27 days. And so President Trump said, listen, we're not going to allow the Chinese to effectively control ingress and egress from the Panama Canal. Here's President Trump talking about this yesterday.
Secretary of State Rubio is in Panama right now, and we're talking about the Panama Canal. What they've done is terrible. They violated the agreement. They're not allowed to violate the agreement. China's running the Panama Canal. That was not given to China. That was given to Panama foolishly. But they violated the agreement, and we're going to take it back or something very powerful is going to happen.
Okay, so the question is, what is that threat designed to do? So Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State, he said in his confirmation hearing that Beijing has the ability to turn the canal into a choke point in a moment of conflict. That's what I'm talking about. They could theoretically, for example, sink barges at both ends of the canal and prevent shipping traffic. You remember just a few years ago when the Suez Canal was blocked by one ship that went sideways? That could easily be done at certain choke points in the Panama Canal, which actually does get incredibly, incredibly narrow near the ends, both ends of the Panama Canal. Over the past two decades, China has developed many economic ties with Panama, including through its Belt and Road Initiative.
The Chinese Belt and Road Initiative is a giant influence operation in which China, quote unquote, gives you things. There are always strings attached. Those strings attached may be surveillance of your country. It may be control. over significant national resources. That's what the Belt and Road Initiative is.
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Chapters
1 chaptersSpeakers
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Ben Shapiro 35 min
Donald Trump 3 min
Unidentified Speaker (Brief Interjection) 1 min
Justin Trudeau 1 min
Jose Raul Molino
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