In recent weeks, when he was President-elect Donald Trump publicly said that Panama should return the Panama Canal to the United States, and he would not rule out using military force to reclaim it. At his presidential Inauguration on Monday Trump doubled down on saying that his new administration was going to take back the canal.

Panama took full control of the canal in 1999, which it operates through the Panama Canal Authority (PCA). In December, Mr Trump threatened to seize control of the canal, declaring the waterway as vital to America’s security and economic interests but it was being run in a “very unfair and injudicious way”.

The neutrality of the nearly 50-mile canal, through which nearly 15,000 ships transit each year, is enshrined in Panama’s Constitution and is enforced by the autonomous Panama Canal Authority.

The new Panamanian ambassador was given strict instructions as he prepared to meet then-President Donald Trump one day in 2019: Do not engage him in any substantive discussion of critical issues.