{"id":40939,"date":"2025-04-14T01:55:00","date_gmt":"2025-04-14T06:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=40939"},"modified":"2025-04-14T02:09:27","modified_gmt":"2025-04-14T07:09:27","slug":"us-defense-secretary-accuses-china-of-planning-to-seize-panama-canal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=40939","title":{"rendered":"US Defense Secretary accuses China of planning to seize Panama Canal"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\"><strong>U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said in an interview with Fox News that China is trying to control the Panama Canal through infrastructure projects and political pressure.<\/strong><strong><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">&#8220;China wants to control politicians. They want to take over the channel. President Trump said if we don&#8217;t intervene, we will fight back,&#8221; the Pentagon chief said.<a href=\"https:\/\/sputniknews.cn\/20250414\/1064977298.html\"><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">Hegseth also said that the United States was &#8220;negligent&#8221; under former President Biden&#8217;s administration, but now this situation will change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\"><a href=\"https:\/\/sputniknews.cn\/20250405\/1064857042.html\">On January 20, Trump expressed his intention to gain control of the Panama Canal<\/a>&nbsp;in his inaugural speech&nbsp;. On February 2, US Secretary of State Rubio visited Panama and told Panamanian President Mulino that Trump was unwilling to maintain the status quo as China&#8217;s influence on Panama seemed to be increasing. Mulino then said that the Panamanian government would no longer renew the memorandum of understanding on jointly building the &#8220;Belt and Road&#8221; with China.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">On April 10, Trump announced that the U.S. military had been deployed to Panama. Hegseth stressed that one of the U.S.&#8217;s top priorities is to ensure free and safe passage through the Panama Canal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\"><a href=\"https:\/\/sputniknews.cn\/20250414\/1064977298.html\">sputniknews<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said in an interview with Fox News that China is trying to control the Panama Canal through infrastructure projects and political pressure. &#8220;China wants to control politicians. They want to take over the channel. President Trump said if we don&#8217;t intervene, we will fight back,&#8221; the Pentagon chief said. Hegseth [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":40940,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[1382,31730,23022,32955],"class_list":["post-40939","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-china","tag-panama-canal","tag-slander","tag-u-s-defense-secretary"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40939","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=40939"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40939\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40941,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40939\/revisions\/40941"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/40940"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=40939"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=40939"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=40939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}