Final answer:
The Panama Canal significantly influenced global trade, economics, and logistics, with both positive and negative impacts from its construction to its ongoing operations. The canal's completion is regarded as a major engineering achievement despite the human and political costs involved.
Step-by-step explanation:
The Panama Canal has had a profound impact on global trade and logistics since its completion. Initiating its construction, the French faced significant challenges, including financial issues and diseases like malaria and yellow fever that took thousands of lives. The United States, under President Theodore Roosevelt, took over and successfully completed the canal in 1914, although not without additional loss of life and controversy over the tactics used to acquire the canal zone.
Despite the initial human cost and political tensions, the canal significantly shortened travel time between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, transforming global trade routes and boosting economic activity. The engineering feat accomplished by the canal's completion has made it one of the most important transportation hubs in the world.
In contemporary times, the canal's control was handed back to Panama in 2000, with the country working on further economic development, including establishing a large free-trade zone and becoming a regional banking center. The impact on Panama has seen changes in its ethnic makeup, an increase in international commerce, and efforts to become a leading economic center in Latin America. Yet, concerns about the influence of Colombian drug money and challenges in managing the canal's operations remain.