The Artificial Waterway: The Panama Canal

The Panama Canal, an artificial waterway that is often seen as a marvel of human engineering, has played an important part in the global maritime transportation system both in the past and in the present day. The Panama Canal’s geographic location has made it vital to the shipment of goods all around the world. The Canal’s location in Central America, has connected the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, greatly decreasing distance and time travelled. As ways of shipping goods across maritime routes has changed, the Panama Canal has needed to expand and adept to new shipping methods. The Panama Canal has an over 100-year history, and the major role it plays in worldwide maritime shipping, makes the importance of this transportation route endure into

Issues with economies of scale, and needing to ship greater amounts of goods to save and make money, has forced the canal to expand. The canal’s expansion was completed in July 2016, with the construction of two new locks, that allow larger ships through one part and smaller ships through another part. The canal’s most recent expansion was prompted by overall commercial changes in the shipping industry. Current shipping practice favor using much larger container ships, instead of the old method of smaller ships with goods stacked inside. Container ships are large tanker ships stacked extremely high with huge containers holding massive amounts of goods. Ships now pay to be transported through the canal, and to be cost effective, ships must move as many goods as possible in the fewest trips possible. Overall, the Panama Canal has expanded its locks, creating a new system to allow much larger ships with many more goods, than the much smaller ships that were transported through in the past. As the Panama Canal expands, its importance to world trade routes, shipments of goods worldwide, and its effect on global economies has also

and global transportation, thus making it extremely impactful on the world economy. The canal has been extremely important to maritime transportation for the U.S. by providing a shipping route that makes it much easier to move goods from the West Coast to the East Coast. This has allowed the U.S. to move goods within its own country, but has also allowed the East Coat to more easily move goods to their important shipping partners in Western Europe, Eastern Asia, and Australia. The Panama Canal also allows important goods like minerals, grains, food products, and petroleum to be exchanged between the U.S. and other global economies. The Panama Canal overall plays a large part in the world economy, by allowing the exchange of goods from the U.S. to other countries around the world and vice versa. Maritime transportation is used to ship good globally than any other method, and the Panama Canal plays an important part in the movement of these goods to support the global chain of supply and demand.

In the end, the Panama Canal plays a large part in the global exchange of goods, by being a major transportation route for maritime trade. Considering future challenges, the canal will need to deal with even greater expansion for larger ships, issues with current container ships losing goods in their waterways, and ownership of the actual canal. Overall, the Panama Canal’s global trade importance