President Donald Trump is continuing his first-term focus on building a big, new American icebreaker fleet. Days after his second inauguration, the president broke from a North Carolina hurricane-recovery briefing and made a surprise announcement that, “we’re going to order about 40 big icebreakers.”
The statement, widely dismissed by industry experts as a gaffe, was well-timed. Just as the Trump was committing the United States to a massive, as-yet un-funded 40-icebreaker buildup, a raggedy set of aged American icebreaking tugs were struggling to free a 663-foot transport ship, the Canadian-flagged Manitoulin, trapped by wind-blown lake ice...
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