The US state department’s assertion that Filipino President Jose Raul Mulino had reached a deal that would grant US warships free access to the Panama Canal was denied on Thursday by the president.
Mulino claimed on Wednesday that he had informed US secretary of defense Pete Hegseth that he could either set the charges for the river nor exempt someone from them, and that the US condition department’s suggestion that something else might have happened late on Wednesday surprised him.
” I totally reject that speech yesterday”, Mulino said during his weekly press event, adding that he had asked Panama’s embassy in Washington to debate the state agency’s statement.
The US government’s statement on Wednesday evening via X was that” US government vessels can now transit the Panama Canal without charge fees, saving the US government millions of dollars annually.” The department had no immediate comment Thursday on Mulino’s remarks.
Later on Wednesday night, the Panama Canal Authority issued its own sarcastic statement, saying it had” not made any adjustments” to the fees.
Mulino claimed that the US statement “really surprises me because they’re making an important, institutional statement from the entity that governs United States foreign policy under the president of the United States based on a falsity.” And that’s intolerable”.
The two different versions were released shortly after Marco Rubio, the secretary of state for the US, met with Mulino and canal administrators and went to the crucial trade route.
Rubio had a message from US President Donald Trump warning that Chinese influence at the canal was unacceptable.
Rubio had informed Mulino that Trump believed that the presence of China in the canal area might be in violation of a treaty that led the United States to turn the canal over to Panama in 1999. The permanent neutrality of the American-built canal is demanded by that treaty.
The canal’s administrators said they were open to discussing whether to give US warships priority crossing the canal, but they did not say whether they had thought about waivering fees.
Mulino asserted on Thursday that neither the government nor the Canal Authority are able to waive fees, as stated in the Panamanian Constitution and laws governing the Canal Authority. ” It’s a constitutional limitation”, he said.
