Either canal being blocked would definitely be a disaster. That's why the US Navy has made it its mission to guarantee freedom of navigation, just like the Royal Navy before them.
USN numbers don't help when what is fucking the Panama Canal is low water levels and poor water cycling design in the legacy locks.
And in case you haven't notice, shit tons of US and allied ships has not been able to stop the Houthi's from effectively shutting down the southern entrance to the Red Sea.
Before, we even had Evergiven fuck the supply chain when it grounded in the Suez for a bit.
The entire economic genga game that Reaganite economics and domestic policy was built on relies on both canals having unimpeded access and no natural variations in climate or political strife near them, which cannot be counted on with the supply chains any further.
Not denying it. I'm the pro-immigration guy. I WANT them to come to my country so that my people can have decent competition. Just as Professor Friedman would have wanted it.
In an ideal world, maybe that works; we do not live in an idle world, protecting vital domestic industries and workers is a strategic imperative (something Friedman's world view doesn't account for and tries to ignore), importing workers import their own issues (see the Indian caste system based discrimination being imported to the US and causing court cases), and depended on no large scale conflicts breaking out to disrupt Friedman's economic/political thesis that was another of those 'end of history' type farces.
I read Friedman, and I know not to take him seriously when the realities of the world have repeated rendered his economic and political thesis moot/irrelevant with current events outpacing his ideology.
That the Reaganites like you keep taking him seriously is part of why the whole GOP is so schizo and incompetent; it lives in a lot of political delusions, false logistical realities, and that strategic concerns can be reduced to purely economic metrics or factors.
I also would prefer to protect the American worker from H1Bs and other imported labor substitutions, as well as from off-shoring, and would like some more Roosevelt style trust-busting against the abusive monopolies that have developed since DC tried to forget anti-trust laws are a thing to enforce.
It's frankly a rare piece of luck that the Marxists sans Sanders got hoodwinked into supporting a policy that will certainly subvert the power of those bloody Unions they love so much. The more free labour pours into the country, the more the bargaining power of the footsoldiers of Socialism is diluted.
Yes, yes, union's are all evil socialist to Reaganite's, and thus you want to import foreign labor to undercut US labor or off-shore to remove US labor as a factor, because you think the west/US is 'above' those jobs 3rd world's are imported for.
This is why the Friedman worshippers are largely ignored and laughed at by people not in the Reaganite cult.