Huddled together on a dirt bank outside a building site on the edge of the Panama Canal, the men shout fervidly about Donald Trump.

The majority of Panamanians have reacted with revulsion to Mr Trump’s pledge to “take back” the key waterway – with thousands having marched and burned effigies of the US president in protest.

But this gaggle of out-of-work construction workers are not excoriating Mr Trump – they are passionately cheering him on.

“May Trump come, take the canal in his pocket and remove all those people from its administration. They are thieves,” one worker, who asked to remain anonymous, bellows, his arms flailing.

Amid rising frustration with José Raúl Mulino, Panama’s president, is an emerging belief that the canal benefits just a few “elites”, resulting in some Panamanians to call for Mr Trump’s intervention.

In his first 100 days, Mr Trump has turned the 51-mile waterway which connects the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans into a political hot rod, claiming it is under Chinese control.