Editor’s Note: The U.S. Coast Guard’s two Arctic Security Cutters to be homeported in Kodiak starting in 2028 would be one of the largest federal government investments here since World War II.
The contracts to build those cutters, and nine more at shipyards in Finland, Texas and Louisiana, was the subject of recent investigative reporting by the New York Times. The Times ran this story in its Saturday, August 1 online edition.
The Kodiak Daily Mirror obtained permission to run the story in its entirety, in two parts, because of its relevance to Kodiak. This is part two of the story. Part one appeared in Thursday’s KDM.
By CHRISTOPHER FLAVELLE,
ANDREA FULLER and NICHOLAS NEHAMAS
After becoming president in 2016, President Trump expressed his reverence for icebreakers. No other branch of the military, he said during 2017 remarks at the Coast Guard Academy, “has the power to break through 21 feet of rock-solid Arctic ice.”
He talked to Finland’s leaders about buying or leasing an icebreaker but couldn’t close the deal before the end of his first term, according to people familiar with those conversations.
After his re-election, Mr. Trump again began trying to buy icebreakers. Coast Guard officials held meetings with U.S. shipbuilders to gauge their interest.
Then a game of golf changed everything.
On a Saturday in March 2025, Mr. Trump played in a tournament at one of his golf courses in Florida. Joining him was Alexander Stubb, the Finnish president. Mr. Stubb had played golf for the Finnish national team and went to Furman University in South Carolina on a golf scholarship. According to Mr. Trump, the two men won the tournament.
Mr. Stubb presented Mr. Trump with a picture of an icebreaker, in what one person described as a handsome golden frame. Shipbuilding is a vital industry in Finland, and the country’s leaders had long sought to persuade the U.S. government to buy vessels from its yards.
Finland’s reasons for courting Mr. Trump went beyond securing a deal for icebreakers, according to people familiar with the two countries’ interactions. Keeping a close relationship allows Mr. Stubb to try to persuade Mr. Trump of the importance of the NATO alliance and maintaining pressure on Russia.
Mr. Trump wrote on social media that Mr. Stubb was “a very good player,” and said Mr. Stubb had praised him for making America strong again.
Mr. Trump added the words that Finland had long sought to hear: “President Stubb and I look forward to strengthening the partnership between the United States and Finland, and that includes the purchase and development of a large number of badly needed icebreakers for the U.S.”
A senior Coast Guard official called, texted and met with Republican lawmakers through the spring and early summer to push for funding, describing icebreakers as a top White House priority, according to two people with knowledge of the outreach.
The pressure worked. Last July, in the Republicans’ spending law, Congress provided $3.5 billion for the ships. But Mr. Trump and his advisers wanted to buy more icebreakers than $3.5 billion would pay for.
The administration at the time had been considering two “very, very good proposals” for icebreakers, the White House budget director, Russell T. Vought, told The Times.
One shipbuilder had offered to build five icebreakers, based on a design originally developed for Russia; another proposal offered six ships, using a design for the Canadian Coast Guard.
“We ultimately didn’t want to have to choose between them,” Mr. Vought said.
In the end, they didn’t have to. “The One Big Beautiful Bill had given us an opportunity to do both,” he added.
The additional icebreaker money — another $3.5 billion — came from a separate fund in the bill intended for what lawmakers called “border support,” according to Troy Edgar, deputy secretary at the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the Coast Guard.
Mr. Trump placed the late-night call to President Stubb in August, not long after the bill was passed.
The two leaders had been negotiating for months about the United States purchasing a used icebreaker from Finland, and perhaps a handful of new vessels. Now, armed with billions in new funding, Mr. Trump wanted to go bigger.
“I’m not going to buy the used one, because it’s too old,” Mr. Trump said, according to an account Mr. Stubb later gave to Finnish journalists. “I want more new ones instead.”
A spokeswoman for Mr. Stubb declined to respond to questions from The Times about Mr. Stubb’s account.
Experts say Mr. Trump’s actions reflect a very real problem: The United States needs more polar icebreakers.
The question, the experts say, is how many the United States really needs. Mr. Trump’s public comments suggest his interest reflects a frustration that other countries have more icebreakers, rather than any review of strategic requirements.
“We only have one,” Mr. Trump complained to military leaders in 2020, somewhat undercounting the American fleet. “Russia has 40.” Russia now has 56 polar icebreakers, the Coast Guard told Congress this past April, while China has five.
Mr. Trump’s focus on Russia’s icebreakers ignores crucial differences between the two countries, according to Ronald O’Rourke, who analyzed the Coast Guard’s icebreaker program for the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service for 18 years until retiring this year.
More than two million Russians live in Arctic communities, and the Russian government needs icebreakers to keep ports and shipping lines open. Fewer than 20,000 Americans live in the Alaskan Arctic, census data show.
The last time the Coast Guard prepared a formal assessment of what vessels it needs, in 2023, the service said it required four or five of the type of icebreakers the Trump administration is buying. It’s not clear what the Coast Guard would do with 11 such vessels, Mr. O’Rourke said — even if the United States took control of Greenland, as Mr. Trump has urged.
Mr. O’Rourke assessed the president’s views on Russian icebreakers by way of an analogy about misplaced car envy.
“My neighbors have a lot of kids, so they bought a minivan,” Mr. O’Rourke said. “Does that mean that my wife and I, who have no kids, also need to buy a minivan?”
The administration’s goal is to obtain the first icebreakers before Mr. Trump leaves office. To meet that timeline, the Coast Guard bypassed the usual process of requesting and reviewing competing bids.
By using the public interest exemption, the provision that allowed the Trump administration to avoid seeking competitive offers, the Coast Guard did not have to prove that the work was urgent, or that only one company could do it. Instead, the agency simply needed to send Congress a letter informing lawmakers of the plan to award a no-bid contract before signing the deal.
By the time the letter arrived, the White House already had announced the deal and the companies had publicly touted their selection.
The proposals accepted by the administration resulted in contracts with three companies.
To be politically defensible, the White House determined that the program should include at least one U.S. shipbuilder, according to people with knowledge of those discussions who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe private deliberations.
The Coast Guard turned to Bollinger Shipyards, a Louisiana-based shipbuilder with a history of government contracts, including an earlier deal for an icebreaker that has yet to be completed.
Bollinger’s C.E.O., Ben Bordelon, and his wife have donated about $1.7 million to Republican candidates and committees within the past decade, far outpacing what they gave to Democrats, federal elections data show.
A spokesman for Bollinger, TJ Tatum, said the company received the contract to build additional icebreakers because of its four decades building ships for the Coast Guard. He said the donations by Mr. Bordelon have gone to lawmakers who sit on committees that oversee shipbuilding and other policy areas important to the company, and the couple have not given money to Mr. Trump.
‘NOBODY MAKES THEM LIKE FINLAND’
Mr. Trump’s vision for Arctic dominance is already taking shape. Inside a cavernous hall at the western edge of Finland, Rauma workers could be seen earlier this year constructing the hull of the deal’s first foreign-made icebreaker.
The trick of an icebreaker is in the curve of its bow. As powerful propellers at the front and back of the ship thrust the vessel forward, that curve lets the hull slide up onto the ice, like a 9,000-ton sea lion hauling out of the water. The weight of the hull then knuckles into the ice, bending it down and outward, leaving a trail of open water in its wake.
Finns say theirs is the only country in the world where every harbor ices up in winter, so their shipyards became adept at building icebreakers.
Republican officials have celebrated the deal as a win for American industry.
At a recent groundbreaking ceremony in Galveston, under watch of armed Coast Guard boats bobbing in the harbor, Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas and Senator Ted Cruz took turns feting Mr. Trump at the shipyard where three icebreakers are slated to be built.
A casual listener could be forgiven for thinking all the new icebreakers would be constructed in America.
“I was very proud when President Trump announced that $3.5 billion was going to Davie Defense to build five Arctic Security Cutters, and to build them here in the Texas Gulf Coast,” Mr. Cruz said to cheers and applause. The first two will in fact be built in Finland.
In an interview afterward, Mr. Cruz offered his own take on Mr. Trump’s decision to buy 11 icebreakers.
He invoked the 1984 Rob Reiner film “This Is Spinal Tap,” about a fictional heavy metal band whose aging members try to forestall irrelevance by embracing excess. The band’s philosophy is captured by its guitarist, who brags that while the volume knobs on other amplifiers stop at 10, his amplifier turns all the way to 11.
“As a child of the ’80s, I have to admit, my own personal theory is the ‘Spinal Tap’ theory: Ours goes to 11,” Mr. Cruz said.
“Although I doubt that was the president’s motivation,” he quickly added.
Copyright 2025, The New York Times Company