Panamanian President José Raúl Mulino announced on Sunday that the Central American nation would cease their involvement with the Belt and Road Initiative advanced by China.

Mulino said that they would not renew their memorandum of understanding on the Silk Road, an element of the Belt and Road Initiative, and explore if they can leave the deal immediately.

The announcement comes shortly after Secretary of State Marco Rubio visited the country to negotiate over the status of the Panama Canal. Rubio revealed via social media on Sunday that the United States government “cannot, and will not, allow the Chinese Communist Party to continue with its effective and growing control over the Panama Canal area.”

Chinese authorities launched the Belt and Road Initiative in an effort to make the communist nation the center of global trade. Many critics of the program note that Chinese government entities ultimately engage in debt trap diplomacy, under which they lend to second-world and third-world countries for infrastructure projects in exchange for control over natural resources.

President Donald Trump has repeatedly voiced his desire to retake the Panama Canal. The infrastructure project was completed by the United States Army Corps of Engineers with the support of President Theodore Roosevelt, significantly reducing the time for ships to travel between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans while avoiding the dangerous tip of South America.

“Our Navy and commerce have been treated in a very unfair and injudicious way,” the commander-in-chief said ahead of his return to office. “The fees being charged by Panama are ridiculous, especially knowing the extraordinary generosity that has been bestowed to Panama.”

Rubio also said that he and Mulino would discuss efforts to end illegal immigration into the United States through the Darien Gap. The chief diplomat witnessed a repatriation flight in which over forty illegal immigrants were returned to their native country of Colombia.