Former White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney explained President-elect Donald Trump’s recent threats about the U.S possibly retaking control of the Panama Canal.
“This is a negotiation,” Mulvaney said during an interview on NewsNation, reports The Hill. “By the way, one of the reasons Trump is so good at negotiating is that it’s a credible threat.
“If he says, you know, ‘Look, we’re going to have problems with Panama if they don’t lower the rates,’” Mulvaney continued, “You know, I don’t envision American troops going in to retake the canal, but you got to think that someone is out there scratching their head going, ‘Is Donald Trump crazy enough to do something like that?’
“And it’s that viable threat that sort of gives him negotiating leverage that not a lot of other folks could ever come up with,” he added.
Over the weekend, Trump called the U.S.-built Panama Canal a “vital national asset.”
