Remaking world trade?

McClatchy Foreign Staff June 18, 2015

—Colossal. Mammoth. Vast.

There’s almost no other way to describe the proposal to build a 170-mile, inter-oceanic canal across Nicaragua, and while the plan has been greeted with widespread skepticism, powerful global forces may also coax the project forward.

Those forces include the rising economic might of China, the suspected backer of the proposal, and the emergence of ever-growing number of mega-ships that can’t pass through an expanded Panama Canal but could transit the one proposed for Nicaragua.

The Miraflores locks mark the Pacific end of the Panama Canal.
The Miraflores locks mark the Pacific end of the Panama Canal. Brito, pictured top, would be the Pacific entry for a rival Nicaragua canal.