As the Trump administration negotiates for what it says will be a better deal over the use of the Panama Canal, the Navy has declined to disclose any information on how frequently it has used the canal or how much the service pays for tolls.
The Navy’s decision to stay silent amid the negotiations with Panama makes it difficult to accurately determine just how much money the Defense Department spends transiting the canal every year and how much value a renegotiated agreement would have.
Meanwhile, it was not clear what Secretary of State Marco Rubio has managed to negotiate as President Donald Trump has threatened to seize the canal, which is a crucial shipping transit point between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Outside experts tell Military.com that while there are legitimate concerns over the canal, the U.S. military has been enjoying special privileges at the strategic crossing for years.
Read Next: Air Force Has Troops Remove Names, Unit Patches from Uniforms During Deportation Flights
During his inauguration speech last month, Trump proclaimed that “above all, China is operating the Panama Canal. And we didn’t give it to China. We gave it to Panama, and we’re taking it back.”
On Sunday, he went further, telling reporters that “we’re going to take it back, or something very powerful is going to happen.”
Much of Trump’s rhetoric on the canal focused on the tolls the Panamanians charge for transit. After his election, he has said in a social media post that “the fees being charged by Panama are ridiculous, especially knowing the extraordinary generosity that has been bestowed to Panama by the U.S.”
“This complete ‘rip-off’ of our country will immediately stop,” he added.
On Sunday, Rubio met with Panamanian President José Raúl Mulino and Foreign Minister Javier Martínez-Acha in Panama City, and the State Department’s spokeswoman, Tammy Bruce, said in a statement that he “made clear that this status quo is unacceptable.”
Three days later, in a social media post, the State Department declared that “the government of Panama has agreed to no longer charge fees for U.S. government vessels” and that the move “saves … millions of dollars a year.”
The Panama Canal authority denied that such a deal was in place hours later in an online statement.
Military.com on Tuesday asked the Navy, one of the major operators of government vessels, how many canal transits the sea service has made in the past several years and what on average they paid for a transit.
Two days later, on Thursday, the Navy said that it would not be commenting and that questions on the topic should actually go to the Office of the Secretary of Defense. The service wouldn’t answer questions about why it wasn’t providing the information to the public.
The Office of the Secretary of Defense runs the most visible media relations operation in the military — they hold the regular, televised press briefings — but making the Pentagon’s top office answer questions on the canal is unusual since the information is likely held by the Navy itself.
Military.com did not receive a comment from the Office of the Secretary of Defense in time for publication.
However, outside experts say that the Navy likely conducts very few transits, and each one costs several hundred thousand dollars.
Salvatore Mercogliano, a maritime historian and former merchant mariner, told Military.com on Friday that “the number of ships that cut through the canal isn’t a lot for the U.S. Navy” and that many of the Navy’s larger ships like aircraft carriers and amphibious assault ships just won’t fit through the canal’s relatively narrow locks.
“You’re basically talking destroyers, submarines and then that’s usually … when they’re in the process of repositioning” and not sailing on a mission, he said.
Mercogliano explained that the canal uses a complex formula to determine what any given ship would pay to make a crossing that is, broadly, based on how large it is.
The London Maritime Institute recently noted in a social media post that large ships such as container ships can pay as much as $450,000 while a small yacht would only pay $3,000 to $6,000.
“Basically, tolls run anywhere from about $100,000 to about $300,000 … that’s about the average for Panama Canal tolls,” Mercogliano said.
He said fees are lower than those for the Suez Canal in Egypt and, in a later exchange, said that the canal does “a lot of agreements with firms for rebates to lower the costs.”
In November 2023, the Navy said that in the past year, the average cost of a Suez Canal transit was approximately $300,000.
Mercogliano also noted that the Navy has “priority rights through the canal” for warships — “it can basically bump up to the front” of the line for the roughly 36 daily passages that the canal conducts.
In their statement, the Panama Canal Authority has said that it is “willing to establish a dialogue with the relevant officials of the United States regarding the transit of warships,” implying that it may be willing to offer other benefits or discounts, but at the moment it doesn’t appear that the canal authority is allowing Navy or Coast Guard ships to transit for free.
Looking to the future, Mercogliano was not dismissive of some broad concerns about U.S. national interests when it comes to the canal. But he said many of the fees the Panamanians charge go toward operating and sustaining the very expensive piece of infrastructure.
In the event of a war with China or a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, Mercogliano said his concern wouldn’t be the warships, but military cargo ships that could be denied passage. “What if Panama says, ‘Listen, we’re taking a neutral approach to the conflict between China and Panama and Taiwan … we really don’t want your military-loaded cargo coming through the canal.’
“Now, that’s a direct violation of the neutrality clause of the treaty, and I think that’s what Secretary Rubio is trying to clearly articulate with the Panamanians — that they would not do that,” he said.
Related: Pentagon Caught Flat-Footed on Trump’s Bombshell Proposal to Seize Gaza, Potentially with US Troops