BREAKING: President Donald Trump declares the U.S. is "taking back" the Panama Canal from Chinese control pic.twitter.com/lqrKSgXzSK

— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) January 20, 2025

President Trump:

President McKinley made our country very rich, through tariffs and through talent. He was a natural businessman and gave Teddy Roosevelt the money for many of the great things he did, including the Panama Canal, which has foolishly been given to the country of Panama after the United States. The United States — I mean, think of this — spent more money than ever spent on a project before and lost 38,000 lives in the building of the Panama Canal.

Smithsonian Instutute:

It was the greatest infrastructure project the world had ever seen. When the 48 mile-long Panama Canal officially opened in 1914, after 10 years of construction, it fulfilled a vision that had tempted people for centuries, but had long seemed impossible.

“Never before has man dreamed of taking such liberties with nature,” wrote journalist Arthur Bullard in awe.

But the project, which employed more than 40,000 laborers, also took immense liberties with human life. Thousands of workers were killed. The official number is 5,609, but many historians think the real toll was several times higher. Hundreds, if not thousands, more were permanently injured.

History Channel:

Death could strike in the form of an 18-ton boulder or miniscule, malaria-carrying mosquitoes that bred by the millions in festering swamps and puddles. Over the span of more than three decades, at least 25,000 workers died in the construction of the Panama Canal. “The working condition in those days were so horrible it would stagger your imagination,” recalled laborer Alfred Dottin. “Death was our constant companion. I shall never forget the train loads of dead men being carted away daily, as if they were just so much lumber.”