Tiny US town now at center of Trump's global fantasy: report

President Donald Trump is advancing his ambitions in the far north with a huge investment in a surprising place, The New York Times reported on Monday: the tiny town of Nome, Alaska.

"Nome is a quiet, frozen frontier town much of the year, known mostly for the Iditarod sled race, and reachable only by air except for a few summer months when the water thaws enough to allow boats through," said the report. "Soon, however, Nome’s existing dock will be turned into the country’s first deepwater Arctic port, a critical hub in President Trump’s ambitions to make the United States master of the far north and compete with other world powers for untapped natural resources and shipping corridors."

The project is estimated to cost "$548 million and counting," according to the report. The plan did not originate with Trump, but he is determined to bring it to fruition.

"Mr. Trump’s aspirations for Nome were made clear near the end of his first term, when Congress authorized the port expansion with administration support," said the report. "Last year, the project moved from paper to procurement as the Army Corps of Engineers awarded a $399.4 million construction contract for the first phase amid an administration-wide push to treat the Arctic and critical minerals as strategic priorities. This summer, crews will start demolishing the existing port."

All of this is occurring in the shadow of Trump's much more headline-grabbing aspiration for the Arctic, that being attempts to force the Kingdom of Denmark to sell or hand over Greenland to the United States. Danish and Greenlandic officials have both rejected this idea, and Trump's escalating rants and angry letters to foreign officials have started to alarm even members of his own party.

It also comes as Alaska has been a sticking point for some of Trump's other ambitions, underpinned by the frequent criticism and lack of support from the state's more independent-minded Republican senator, Lisa Murkowski. Last year, the GOP was forced to make a number of special considerations for the state to secure Murkowski's vote to pass Trump's controversial tax cut megabill.