Hong Kong billionaire to sell Panama Canal ports to US firm
www.bbc.com
BlackRock will buy two ports after Trump's interest in taking back control of the key shipping route.

In a statement announcing the business deal, Frank Sixt, co-managing director of CK Hutchison, said: “I would like to stress that the transaction is purely commercial in nature and wholly unrelated to recent political news reports concerning the Panama Ports.”

BlackRock is one of the world’s largest asset management companies.

  • @[email protected]English
    5•1 day ago

    Well, it depends on what you mean by “the US shipping industry”.

    It benefits US shipmakers (eliminates competition), US seamen (eliminates competition), and industries that compete with shipping like freight trains (eliminates competition).

    It disadvantages ports and American people/companies who want things shipped cost-effectively. It’s bad for islands, like Hawaii, where it drives up prices.

    I’d call “ports” some of the shipping industry, but also “shipmakers” and “seamen”.

    If the Jones Act were to go away, we would probably move a lot more goods by water than we do today.

    • @[email protected]
      1•1 day ago

      Right, so while it does have its intended protectionist and national security benefits, it’s at the cost of higher prices for everyone and thus a drag on the economy and subsidising the rail transport oligopoly.

      Not sure how the Panama canal features into this tho, unless Trump follows through on annexing Panama, wouldn’t it still be a foreign port for the purposes of the Jones act? And isn’t that immaterial anyway when it’s used as a transit point?

      • @[email protected]English
        3•1 day ago

        Not sure how the Panama canal features into this tho, unless Trump follows through on annexing Panama, wouldn’t it still be a foreign port for the purposes of the Jones act? And isn’t that immaterial anyway when it’s used as a transit point?

        Transiting the Panama Canal doesn’t count as moving goods to Panama.

        The Jones Act makes it more expensive to move goods by ship between locations in the US. If it went away, we would move more goods by ship between the US East Coast and US West Coast. That would make the Panama Canal abruptly a lot more valuable.

        EDIT: Oh, I see what you mean. Maybe they didn’t acquire any of the the infrastructure of the Canal itself, but just infrastructure for offloading stuff going to Panama, so ships transiting it wouldn’t use what they acquired. I don’t know that.

        EDIT2: Yeah, looks like it:

        https://www.cbsnews.com/news/blackrock-panama-canal-deal-ck-hutchison-trump/

        In January, U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, the Republican chair of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, raised concerns that China could exploit or block passage through the canal and that the ports “give China ready observation posts” to take action. “This situation, I believe, posts acute risks for U.S. national security,” Cruz said.

        So he’s raising the issue of China being near shipping moving through the Canal, not actually in its path. Probably right then.