The mighty Panama Canal route links trade between 2 huge oceans
Source: The Financial Times
Tiny little Panama, a jungly nation with a population only as big as Singapore’s, is about to do something spectacularly great for the entire world on Sunday. This itty bitty state has a masterplan to shower friendship and prosperity to huge swathes of the world, north and south and east and west, doing more for the cause of peace and unity than just about any other nation on earth.
The world is going to be different after Sunday.
On Sunday, Panama’s voters among its 4 million population will go to the polls on the most important referendum since the Panama Canal was built some 90 years ago – on whether to widen the Canal. They are likely to vote ‘yes.’ Polls show that some 70% of Panamanians are in favor of it, so I’m not even going to entertain the idea of surprises.
The $5 billion project (it will probably end up costing twice that, as these things go) will be to deepen the existing canal and add a third set of locks, the mechanical devices that can literally lift ships with a little bounce like toys into the next bedrock-lined pool of water, and the next until the ship can sail onward to reach either the Pacific or Atlantic – I imagine that would mean lots of trench digging parallel to the existing canal. When I was in Panama in 2000, I was shown the preparations being made along the water’s edge with lots of tractors, dirt mounds and spray paint markers, so it’s been in preparation for a long time.
About 4% of all world trade passes through the Canal, as of 2000 – recent reports suggest that that figure is probably higher right now, given the phenomenal growth of world trade and the growing use of the Canal. The Canal unites the great factories of Shanghai and Wuhan and Shenzhen and Harbin to the ports of New Jersey and Miami and Baltimore and Philadelphia. It also unites those Chinese cities to the ports of Sao Paulo and Buenos Aires and Caracas where the great grain and soy and oil shipments are sent off to the Middle Kingdom in exchange for Made In China goods.
The result of this widening is an expected 33% rise in Pacific Rim trade for New Jersey and more for all the other ports, too. That means tons of jobs for all, on both sides of world, and for Panama too. It means rises in productivity and efficiency, which translates into lower prices for consumers, which automatically will raise prosperity across the globe. Tiny little Panama is doing this!
The whole peaceful history of the world since Marco Polo made his first journey east has been the quest to unite the great civilizations of east and west, which are mutually complementary and cannot live without one another. Little Panama is the one place on earth that enables it to happen. This is a great gift to the world which will owe a huge debt of gratitude to this smallest of nations with biggest of heart and vision.
(I’ll post some links on these thoughts soon)