Testimony · Administration
Kozak to the Senate: the sovereignty of our hemisphere is non-negotiable.
State's senior official for the Western Hemisphere names Panama as the theater where the United States is backing a partner under Chinese economic retaliation.
We also support partners who stand up to the influence of extra-hemispheric competitors. The sovereignty of our hemisphere is non-negotiable. We, along with others in the region, support Panama as China conducts economic retaliation and seeks to undermine the rule of law in Panama following the decision by Panama's independent Supreme Court regarding the Balboa and Cristóbal ports.
A partner government's independent court ruled on the Balboa and Cristóbal ports, Beijing answered with economic retaliation, and the United States is publicly backing the partner. That is the doctrine's defensive face: when alignment with American standards draws coercion, the coercion gets answered rather than absorbed. The framing around it — sovereignty non-negotiable, partnerships built to expand prosperity — makes the backing a policy rather than an episode.
The date matters as much as the content. The same day, a House Foreign Affairs subcommittee held the first congressional hearing devoted to Economic Security Zones as an instrument, where witnesses from mining, processing, and infrastructure export converged on the durability of political-risk protection as the binding constraint on private capital. A day later, Chairman Mast named the DFC, USTDA, and MCC among the most important tools of economic statecraft. The hemisphere is where the theater and the toolkit meet.