Panama is on the Guest List of the Shield of the Americas Summit

2026-03-06 - 18:57

José Raúl Mulino, the president of Panama, flies to Miami this Friday. Tomorrow, Saturday, he will have lunch with Donald Trump and 11 other heads of state at Trump National Doral, the US president’s golf course transformed, for one day, into a diplomatic war room. The summit is called “Shield of the Americas.” Its objective, according to the White House spokeswoman, is “to promote freedom, security, and prosperity in our region.” With the Monroe Doctrine in the North Although it is being held amid the war raging in the Middle East, Trump conceived this meeting long before, as part of his national security strategy and in line with his government’s purpose of reinforcing American leadership on the continent and updating, in effect, the Monroe Doctrine, the foreign policy principle proclaimed in 1823 under the motto “America for the Americans”. The meeting comes 63 days after U.S. forces captured Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, in Venezuela. On January 3, 2026, they were transferred to a jail in New York, where they face drug trafficking charges. The ‘Safe Hemisphere’ Menu US President Donald Trump, right, and Nayib Bukele, El Salvador’s president, during a meeting in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC The selection of guests reflects a precise political reading: most share ideological positions close to Washington’s agenda. Javier Milei (Argentina), Nayib Bukele (El Salvador) pictured above, Daniel Noboa (Ecuador), and Santiago Peña (Paraguay) are among those invited. The faces of the new Latin American alignment. Mexico did not receive an invitation, despite being the largest trading partner in the USMCA (United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement) and the United States’ closest neighbor. Neither did Brazil, Colombia, Uruguay, or Guatemala. Panama President Mulino is Indeed on the List President Mulino himself acknowledged that the meeting lacks a formal structure. He said so during his press conference this Thursday, March 5. “There isn’t really a much defined format,” he stated. It will be a luncheon with 12 presidents and Trump at the helm, with an agenda that, as he described it, will be distributed according to the importance that each country has for Washington. “I’m inclined to think that the agenda will be distributed according to the importance each country holds for the United States, and the response we can all give regarding whatever concerns President Trump. There isn’t really a much defined format,” he said. Panama, however, has something that no other country in that room possesses: the Canal. The interoceanic waterway handles approximately 5% of global trade and connects the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans in less than 24 hours. For Washington, its strategic control has always remained a matter of national security. Trump made it clear from the first day of his second term: he spoke of “taking back” the Canal, questioned the tariffs paid by American ships, and raised the specter of Chinese influence on its operation. Iran in the Backyard But the summit isn’t solely focused on drug trafficking and migration, even though those are the stated agenda items. Missiles are raining down in the Middle East these days, and all indications are that the conflict will dominate much of the discussion. Washington maintains that Tehran financed Hezbollah through business dealings with drug cartels in Mexico and Colombia, and that sleeper cells of the Lebanese group exist in Ciudad del Este, Paraguay. President of Argentina Javier Milei meeting up with Panama President Mulina pictured above. An Argentine court determined in 2024 that the 1992 and 1994 bombings in Buenos Aires were carried out by Hezbollah on the orders of and with the funding of Iran. Panama is intimately familiar with this threat. For years, Venezuela harbored Ali Zaki Hage Jalil, identified as one of those involved in the bombing of Alas Chiricanas Flight 901 in 1994, which claimed the lives of 21 members of the Jewish community. Interpol Venezuela agents, in coordination with Panamanian judicial authorities, carried out his capture after an international alert was issued for his location and arrest. China in the Other Corner Besides Iran, there’s another specter in the room: Beijing. The summit seeks to consolidate a bloc aligned with Washington and curb what the United States calls “Chinese encroachment” on Latin American resources and markets. In recent years, China has multiplied its investments in infrastructure, energy and telecommunications in several countries in the region, a matter that worries Washington. The Ports Panama arrives at this summit at a politically convenient moment for Mulino: he has just handed over the ports of Balboa and Cristóbal to operators allied with the United States. That carries weight at the table. On January 20, 2025, when he took office, Trump set his sights on the Panama Canal and expressed his interest in resuming its operation, arguing that China controlled it. During the first half of 2025, Trump and his top aides claimed that China controlled the ports on both sides of the Canal. They were referring to the Hong Kong-based company CK Hutchison Holdings, which operates through its subsidiary Panama Ports Company (PPC). Washington’s narrative suggests that control of these ports represents a strategic threat due to the influence of Chinese capital at the entry and exit points of the interoceanic waterway. The summit photo will serve as a political message ahead of the bilateral meeting between Trump and Xi Jinping, scheduled for the end of March. Those who appear in that image will implicitly be on one side of the line. Mulino himself has already taken a position: he recently declared that China needs Panama more than Panama needs China. This same view is shared by Leland Lazarus, a researcher on US-China relations and a former State Department official. “China needs Panama more than Panama needs China,” he stated during a visit to the country last January, noting that the Canal is vital for Chinese trade. So at the Trump summit, Panama will be there. With the Canal in tow, the ports recently transferred, and a bilateral relationship that depends on what Mulino is willing to compromise on. Outgoing Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem will serve as “Special Envoy” to The Shield of the Americas, a new initiative launched by President Donald Trump to stop mass migration to the U.S. and thwart drug cartels, the president announced Thursday. The Shield of the Americas is Trump’s newly-established summit that will feature allied leaders of Latin American countries, such as President José Raúl Mulino from Panama, President Javier Milei of Argentina and President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador, to discuss and commit to stopping illegal immigration and drug cartels. Noem’s new position comes after the president ousted her from her role leading the department on its aggressive anti-immigration operation, which resulted in 675,000 deportations and led to the deaths of three U.S. citizens. In a statement, Noem thanked the president for the appointment and said she was looking forward to working with leaders “to dismantle cartels that have poured drugs” into the U.S. As one of her primary acts as special envoy, Noem said she plans to join Trump, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Trade Representative Jamieson Greer at the first summit Saturday in Miami, Florida.