WASHINGTON — Matthew Ricchiazzi, a Washington-based political consultant and founder of Enkindle Capital, is urging President Donald Trump to “seize Panama on paper” by invoking original U.S. rights under the 1903 Hay–Bunau-Varilla Treaty alongside residual authority from the later Torrijos-Carter Treaties.
The framework would map Panama as a U.S. territory, extend congressional representation, open a referendum pathway to statehood, and unlock American-led construction of new or expanded interoceanic canals and major transcontinental railways.
Ricchiazzi describes the proposal as a non-military approach that restores and modernizes legal instruments dating to the Canal’s creation.
The 1903 treaty, signed after Panama’s separation from Colombia, granted the United States, in perpetuity, the exclusive use, occupation, and control of a Canal Zone roughly 10 miles wide for the construction, operation, and protection of the waterway. That perpetual grant underpinned American administration until the 1977 Torrijos-Carter Treaties transferred full operational control to Panama by the end of 1999 while establishing permanent neutrality guarantees.
“The 1903 treaty gave the United States perpetual rights over the Canal Zone precisely because the United States built and paid for the Canal,” Ricchiazzi said. “Those original rights, together with the Neutrality Treaty’s permanent character and the historical American contribution, provide a basis for seizing the situation on paper—mapping Panama as an organized U.S. territory and using that status to finance and operate the next generation of canals and railways.”
Under the proposal, the Trump administration would begin designating and mapping Panama as an organized U.S. territory. The territory would elect a non-voting Delegate to the U.S. House of Representatives, consistent with the representation afforded to the District of Columbia, Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, American Samoa, and the Northern Mariana Islands. Residents would retain the ability, through a voter referendum, to pursue a pathway toward statehood if they so chose.
Ricchiazzi presents this structure as a way to align governance of critical infrastructure with U.S. strategic interests while providing Panamanians a formal voice in Congress and a democratic option for deeper integration.
The infrastructure component remains central. Territorial status and revived development rights, he contends, would facilitate joint development authorities or long-term concessions authorizing U.S. or U.S.-allied capital to build expanded lock capacity, a parallel waterway where geography and water resources permit, and high-capacity freight rail corridors capable of moving containers and energy products between the Atlantic and Pacific in hours.
He notes that the existing Canal, which relies on freshwater from Gatún Lake, has repeatedly faced El Niño-driven droughts that force draft restrictions and cuts in daily transits. The Panama Canal Authority is advancing projects such as the Río Indio reservoir, a cross-isthmus energy pipeline, and new terminals, but he views these as incremental relative to competing routes.
Those competing routes include Mexico’s Interoceanic Corridor of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, a roughly 300-kilometer rail “dry canal” linking Pacific and Gulf ports, and Chinese-backed concepts for longer bioceanic railways connecting Brazil’s Atlantic coast to Pacific ports in Peru. Roughly three-quarters of Canal cargo has U.S. origins or destinations, Ricchiazzi notes, making reliable, redundant capacity a direct American interest.
Invoking the 1903 grant alongside later neutrality provisions, in his view, would undercut the rationale for adversary-led mega-projects while delivering revenue, employment, and water-security benefits to Panama.
The proposal builds on recent U.S. pressure that reduced Chinese commercial leverage near the Canal. Hong Kong-based CK Hutchison Holdings long operated ports at both ends of the waterway. Administration warnings and diplomatic engagement contributed to a Panamanian Supreme Court ruling that the concessions were unconstitutional; Panama occupied the ports, shifted interim operations toward Western operators, and exited China’s Belt and Road Initiative. Beijing has responded with economic measures. Ricchiazzi argues that these steps addressed specific footholds but left the deeper capacity and governance questions unresolved.
Critics of assertive treaty readings and territorial concepts have long characterized them as imperial nostalgia or a challenge to Latin American sovereignty, noting that the 1977 treaties superseded the 1903 arrangements. Ricchiazzi counters that the original perpetual grant reflected the United States’ foundational investment and that the Neutrality Treaty preserved a permanent U.S. interest in the Canal’s openness. Structured partnership with representation and a referendum pathway, he says, is more durable than pure coercion or continued strategic drift.
Trump has already demonstrated that targeted pressure can roll back specific Chinese port positions without military action. Ricchiazzi’s call is to convert that leverage into a paper framework rooted in the 1903 treaty rights—territorial mapping, a non-voting House Delegate, a statehood option via referendum, and development rights for new canals and railways.
In his view, the isthmus remains the shortest path between the oceans, and American treaty authority, capital, and political institutions should be used to keep it open, redundant, and free of adversary control.
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