Expensive in absolute terms, yes.

Based on the calculator here:

https://www.wilhelmsen.com/tollcalculators/panama-toll-calcu...

It costs $1,196,397.54 for the largest possible ship to go though.

That's for 13,000 TEUs though (so 6500 standard containers) That's $184 per container. Now think about how much a container holds, and per item for sale it becomes pretty cheap.

My Costa Rican brother-in-law was just telling me that a couple Central American countries are working on new canals because the Panama canal is fairly saturated.