The Panama Canal, one of the world's most consequential corridors of commerce, is confronting a reckoning that water and weather have long threatened to deliver. Drought deepened by El Niño has forced its operators to restrict how many ships may pass and how heavily they may ride in the water, squeezing a chokepoint through which five percent of global maritime trade flows. Authorities have postponed a planned tightening of restrictions, buying time but not solutions, while acknowledging that any permanent remedy lies roughly five years away. It is a reminder that the infrastructure humanity b