Donald Trump has been playing a very aggressive game of geopolitical Whac-A-Mole across Latin America, and China keeps being the mole. After already squeezing Beijing's interests in Cuba, Panama, and Venezuela, the US president may be lining up Nicaragua as his next move - and the reason is a canal.
The canal that could change everything
Yes, another canal. Because apparently one wasn't enough for the hemisphere. According to reporting by the South China Morning Post, a scholar named Zhang has warned that Nicaragua could become the next major economic battleground between Washington and Beijing - specifically if China decides to resurrect its long-dormant ambition to build a canal cutting across the country, connecting the Pacific Ocean to the Caribbean Sea.
The project has been kicking around for years, mostly gathering dust, but if Beijing were to seriously revive it, analysts suggest it would almost certainly grab Trump's attention in the worst possible way for Managua.
A pattern worth noticing
Trump's track record since returning to office has been pretty consistent on this front. Cuba, Panama, Venezuela - in each case, US pressure has been applied in ways that directly targeted or complicated Chinese economic interests. Panama is the most obvious example, given Trump's very loud and very public obsession with the Panama Canal and who gets to influence it.
Nicaragua, for now, has not been directly targeted. But Zhang's warning, as reported by the South China Morning Post, is essentially: don't get comfortable. The logic is straightforward - a Chinese-built canal in Nicaragua would be a strategic nightmare for Washington, sitting right in what American foreign policy has historically considered its own backyard.
Why Nicaragua specifically?
Nicaragua under President Daniel Ortega has drifted firmly into China's orbit in recent years, cutting ties with Taiwan in 2021 and cozying up to Beijing. That relationship, combined with the canal project's potential to give China a massive physical footprint in Central America, is exactly the kind of thing that tends to make Washington very itchy.
The canal idea itself has been around since at least 2013, when a Chinese company received a concession to build it, but meaningful progress has been minimal. Whether Beijing chooses to push it forward - knowing it could trigger a Trump reaction - is now apparently a calculation worth watching carefully.
For now, Nicaragua remains off Trump's public Latin America hit list. But as Zhang's analysis suggests, that list has been growing steadily, and the logic of the situation points in one direction.
