OK, did not see this coming.
This is what soft (financial) power looks like now, then?
Back a million news cycles ago when Trump said he wanted Panama canal he wasn't, um, kidding? Just that BlackRock, the informal American sovereign wealth fund, is the entity taking it over.
mh-kay!
The canal has become a flashpoint in Trump’s first 100 days in office, as the US president looks to expand the country’s borders and take control of infrastructure assets — roiling US allies and countries that had profited from decades of growing free trade. The deal with BlackRock comes after the asset manager’s acquisition of GIP, which helped make the firm a force in infrastructure investing.
Seemed the sellers did not think it had to do with political posturing:
The transaction is “purely commercial in nature and wholly unrelated to recent political news reports concerning the Panama Ports”, said CK Hutchison co-managing director Frank Sixt.
It's hard to make sense of absolutely everything in this weird world.
non-paywall:
https://archive.md/jytZ9