In recent weeks, when he was President-elect Donald Trump publicly said that Panama should return the Panama Canal to the United States, and he would not rule out using military force to reclaim it. At his presidential Inauguration on Monday Trump doubled down on saying that his new administration was going to take back the canal.

The Panamanian leader added he will not allow his country’s “total superiority” of the shipping channel to be lessened.

President Donald Trump cannot take the Panama Canal — at least not legally — as he would be violating every single treaty that the U.S. has come into with Panama since 1945, international law and national security experts told WLRN.

It is now a weapon being used against us.” Trump’s skepticism about U.S. support for Ukraine and Taiwan, his eagerness to impose tariffs, and his threats to retake the Panama Canal, absorb Canada, and acquire Greenland make it clear that he envisions a return to nineteenth-century power politics and spheres of interest,

Trump has repeatedly expressed interest in territorial expansion, specifically setting his sights on Canada, Greenland and the Panama Canal.

Read our story about Mr Trump’s effort to expand “impoundment”, a practice that would boost presidential power at the expense of the legislature’s long-established rights. From Monday to Thursday we quiz you on all things American.

Trump is right to lament the lives lost for the creation of the canal. They were mostly Black Caribbean migrant workers, living and dying under Jim Crow conditions that the U.S. imposed in Panama.

During a Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee hearing today, Senator Ted Cruz questioned experts over China's influence over the Panama Canal.

Nancy Soderberg, a former United Nations ambassador and the director of the Public Service Leadership Program at UNF, joins Bruce Hamilton on Politics & Power this week to see if President Donald Trump is trying to gain the upper hand with China or even truly has an expansionist agenda.

President Trump's priorities of immigration enforcement and promoting U.S. interests in the Panama Canal lead the political agenda in Washington.