President-elect Donald Trump slammed Jimmy Carter’s agreement to transfer ownership of the Panama Canal to Panama as a “disgrace” — on the first day the late former president is set to lie in state at the U.S. Capitol.
“Jimmy Carter gave it to them for $1 and they were supposed to treat us well. I thought it was a terrible thing to do,” Trump said Tuesday at a news conference at Mar-a-Lago.
Carter died last month at 100 years old. On Tuesday, his casket was transferred to Washington, D.C., where he will lie in state at the Capitol before his funeral on Thursday.
The Democrat signed the Torrijos-Carter Treaties in 1977 during his one term in office, setting in motion the 1999 transfer of the U.S.-built infrastructural wonder to the country of Panama. No part of those agreements included a $1 sale.
“Nobody wants to talk about the Panama Canal now, it’s inappropriate I guess, because it’s a bad part of the Carter legacy,” Trump said later in the press conference. He added that Carter was “a good man” and “a very fine person,” but that “giving the Panama Canal to Panama was a very big mistake.”
“And I believe that’s why Jimmy Carter lost the election in my opinion, moreso maybe than the hostages,” Trump said, referring to American diplomats in Iran who were held hostage for over a year.
Trump has been threatening to take back the Panama Canal — a link between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans essential for global trade — and railed against the Panamanian president, José Raúl Mulino, who has maintained that the canal will remain under his country’s control.
“They laugh at us because they think we’re stupid,” Trump said Tuesday of Panama. “But we’re not stupid anymore, so the Panama Canal is under discussion with them right now. They’ve violated every aspect of the agreement and they morally violated it also.”
Asked by a reporter if he could “assure the world” he would not use “military or economic coercion” in his efforts to bring the canal and Greenland under U.S. control, Trump said “no.”
“I’m not going to commit to that,” Trump said. “It might be that you’ll have to do something.”
