An Alaska Town Is Now Key to Trump’s Global Ambitions

image from: nytimes.com

To the unimaginative eye, the view of Nome, Alaska, from Joy Baker’s well-heated S.U.V. looked like a whole lot of nothing: The early winter sun was sliding below the horizon barely four hours after it had risen, the gray water of the inner harbor had already frozen over, and the only stirring came from a flock of hearty seabirds diving for dinner just off shore.

But Ms. Baker has a vision that goes well beyond the subarctic calm: “More traffic, more services, more jobs. More of everything for people here.”

Ms. Baker is director of the Port of Nome and thus the local overseer for a $548-million-and-counting plan to expand the port, in one of America’s most remote cities on the Bering Sea. 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.

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.

(READ MORE - nytimes.com)