Defense Secretary Hegseth is headed to Panama on Monday to meet with the nation’s president and attend a Central American Security Conference, a trip that comes as the Trump administration seeks to inflict another round of pinpricks to reduce Communist China’s global influence, seen by Mr. Trump as the number one threat to American economic and national security.

The secretary will hold bilateral meetings with senior civilian, military, and security leaders in an attempt to strengthen regional partnerships and move closer to “our shared vision for a peaceful and secure Western Hemisphere,” the Pentagon’s chief spokesman, Sean Parnell, said announcing the trip. 

During his visit, Mr. Hegseth is expected to discuss with Panama’s president, José Raúl Mulino, cooperation on protecting the Panama Canal’s neutrality and eliminating illegal immigration and drug trafficking entering America.

As home to the maritime shortcut linking the Eastern and Western hemispheres, Panama has recently found itself in the center of a tug of war between America and China. 

Built by American manpower in the early 1900s, Washington turned over control of the canal to Panama on December 31, 1999, under a treaty signed in 1977 by President Carter. In his inaugural address in January, Mr. Trump questioned whether that handoff was legal, and said that he would seek to regain ownership of the canal. While Panama has rejected any overture to purchase the canal, legislation to do so has been introduced in Congress by South Dakota’s Republican Representative, Dusty Johnson.

In February, Secretary of State Rubio did receive a commitment from Mr. Mulino to not renew a 2017 agreement that gave China authority to operate the canal. Shortly after Messrs. Mulino and Rubio met, a consortium including American-founded BlackRock, Inc. sought to purchase the port authority from a Hong Kong-based conglomerate, CK Hutchison, a deal that the Chinese government is trying to scuttle. 

Speaking last week at his confirmation hearing to become Mr. Trump’s ambassador to China, businessman and former Georgia Republican senator David Perdue said the conglomerate is owned in part by the Chinese Communist Party, whose authoritarian views risk American free-market capitalism. Seventy-five percent of traffic through the canal is headed to American ports

“The Panama Canal is a strategic issue for the United States,” he said. “Where were we when those two ports were purchased by CK Hutchison to start with?”

Any deal for operation of the ports must be approved by Panama’s government. Mr. Hegseth’s trip will be used in part to persuade Mr. Mulino to tighten relations with America. In February, the two agreed that it was time to beef up military cooperation to protect the canal’s neutrality. Annual military exercises between the two nations focused on the canal concluded last week. Additional exercises will be held while Mr. Hegseth is in country. 

As the canal’s fate lingers large this week, the Trump administration is prodding China elsewhere, imposing a trillion-dollar tariff that goes into effect this week as part of the tariff regimen. While 50 nations have reached out to the administration to review their tariff status, China is not among them. That’s fine with Mr. Trump, who said Sunday evening that with a $1 trillion trade deficit, he’s not interested in making any deals. 

“China is right now taking a big hit because everyone knows we’re right. They have to pay tariffs because otherwise … they have a surplus with us that is not sustainable. And we’re talking about a trillion dollars, you know that, right? And we’re not going to lose $1 trillion for the privilege of buying pencils from China,” he said aboard Air Force One. 

Mr. Perdue noted that America needs to rebuild its strategic supply chains, including rare earth elements, steel, shipbuilding, pharmaceuticals, chips, and quantum computing. 

“We’ve acquiesced through this globalization in the last two decades to basically China and people who would do us harm. The reciprocal nature that we want with China — I think President Trump is all over that. The starting conversation with trade — there are going to be many others,” he said.

Additional cooperation may need to come with incentives for Mr. Mulino. Panama is facing an economic downturn and the health of the canal’s infrastructure is in question.