US President Donald Trump had been hammering Panama for weeks over its most valuable asset, the Panama Canal, saying, without evidence, that China operated the waterway. There seemed to be no way Panama could get Washington off its back.
Now, Wall Street has intervened.
An investment group led by BlackRock, a giant US asset manager, said it had agreed to buy two ports in Panama owned by a Hong Kong company that had become the focus of the tensions between Panama and Trump.
BlackRock will buy the ports, which sit at either end of the canal, and more than 40 others from Hong Kong conglomerate CK Hutchison for about US$19bil (RM84bil).
Though Trump has other complaints about the canal – it charges too much, he contends – the deal greatly relieves pressure on Panama, political analysts said.
“It is an elegant off-ramp for what looked to be an unsolvable crisis,” said Benjamin Gedan, director of the Latin American programme at the Wilson Centre.
The deal is also an indication of the spoils available to US companies as the Trump administration pursues its “America first” foreign policy.
And for some historians, it brings up memories of the outsize power that Wall Street banks have had in Latin America.
“Where are the Panamanian voices here?” said Peter James Hudson, an associate professor at the University of British Columbia and the author of Bankers and Empire: How Wall Street Colonized the Caribbean. “They are completely lost in this larger story of Trump’s efforts.”
Panama President Jose Raul Mulino appeared to downplay the geopolitical implications of the proposed acquisition, describing the deal in a social media post as “a global transaction, between private companies, motivated by mutual interests”.
For BlackRock, it’s the latest sign of its desire to expand beyond what it has historically been known for – managing trillions of dollars for everyday investors in stock and bond funds.
BlackRock is buying the ports through Global Infrastructure Partners (GIP), an investment firm it bought last year for almost US$13bil that owns and operates many ports, airports and data centres.
The conversations between the BlackRock-led consortium and executives at CK Hutchison, which is owned by the Li family, one of Asia’s wealthiest, began recently, according to a person familiar with the discussions.
The Li family believed it was under political pressure to exit the ports business, particularly its holdings in the Panama Canal, the person said.
The Panama Canal provides a crucial shortcut, connecting the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. Vessels do not need to stop at Panama’s ports to go through the canal.
Trump has frequently said he wants the United States to retake control of the waterway, which it ceded to Panama in 2000.
CK Hutchison has operated the Balboa and Cristobal ports since 1997, when Panama granted the company 25-year concessions for the facilities. The concessions were renewed for another 25 years in 2021.
The BlackRock investment group will be buying the companies that own the port concessions.
In the past several weeks, executives at BlackRock, including Laurence Fink, its CEO, and a board member, Adebayo Ogunlesi, briefed Trump, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and others on the deal, according to two people involved in the deal.
The administration was supportive, they added.
The Li family specifically sought a US buyer, one of the people briefed on the discussions said. There were three other bids for the deal, another person familiar with the deal said.
Frank Sixt, a co-managing director at CK Hutchison, said in a statement that the deal was “purely commercial in nature and wholly unrelated to recent political news reports concerning the Panama ports”.
This is BlackRock’s largest infrastructure deal ever. It is doing the deal with a partner known as Terminal Investment Ltd, which operates ports served by the world’s largest container shipping company, Mediterranean Shipping.
The deal adds to Terminal Investment’s portfolio of ports in Europe and Latin America, and in addition to operating ports in the Panama Canal, the buyers were particularly interested in CK Hutchison’s ports in Asia.
“These world-class ports facilitate global growth,” Fink said in a statement.
This deal also shows just how central Ogunlesi has become to BlackRock.
After BlackRock acquired GIP, Ogunlesi became the firm’s largest individual shareholder. He separately sits on the board of Terminal Investment.
“BlackRock couldn’t have done it without GIP, and GIP without BlackRock,” said Ralph Schlosstein, chairman emeritus of the investment bank Evercore and a co-founder of BlackRock.
“The connectivity that Larry has with public sector leaders around the globe and the capabilities that Bayo brings to the table are a compelling combination.”
The Trump administration’s support of the BlackRock-led deal to buy these ports comes after Fink and the firm became the target of many conservative lawmakers and politicians for his past comments urging corporations to consider environmental, social and governance, or ESG, goals.
More recently and particularly in recent weeks, BlackRock has stepped back from ESG and diversity initiatives.
CK Hutchison is part of the conglomerate founded by Li Ka-shing, who was Hong Kong’s richest man at one point.
Li retired in 2018 and handed over control to his son, Victor Li. The conglomerate includes retail chains, telecommunications networks and energy companies.
Trump has also taken aim at the fees that the Panama Canal charges shipping companies to use the waterway.
The fees have gone up in recent years, but the Panamanian agency that runs the canal has said droughts, investments in upgrades and sheer demand were responsible for the increases. — ©2025 The New York Times Company
This article originally appeared in The New York Times
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