Per the Wall Street Journal, Davie Shipbuilding, a Canadian maritime manufacturer, is currently in talks to acquire shipyards in Texas from Gulf Copper & Manufacturing for the express purpose of building new icebreaker ships. America’s shipbuilding capability has been sinking for decades now. Per a separate WSJ report, over the last 50 years the U.S. has gone from building around 5% of the global tonnage of ships to an anemic 0.1% today. That’s true across a wide variety of heavy vessels, including icebreakers, ships specifically designed to ram their way through thick ice to carve a path that other ships can follow.
This has grown into a major strategic necessity as the Arctic has grown into a geopolitical flashpoint. Buried under ice and sea are precious minerals such as platinum, copper, lithium, cobalt, and nickel, as well as that source of endless instability, natural gas. In other words, these are the resources needed for both green and polluting energy. Mining companies want to get in there, and so, too, do all the major nations.
Unfortunately for everyone else, the nation that currently dominates this region is Russia. That one country is so wide that it covers fully 53% of the entire Arctic coastline; it also boasts a fleet of over 50 icebreakers to enable both naval and commercial passage. The U.S., by contrast, has a grand total of three. To compete, America will need to drastically ramp up its icebreaking capability. A new dedicated shipyard is a start.
The struggle for the Arctic
While those resources have always been buried down there, they’ve been inaccessible up until now, even with icebreakers. What’s happened, of course, is that the icecaps are melting; the Arctic has warmed four times faster than the rest of the planet, per the Arctic Institute. This has thinned the ice to the point that new commercial opportunities are opening up. Ironically, natural gas, one of the culprits of the warming planet, is one of those opportunities. And it’s a colossal one: Estimates are that around 30% of all untapped natural gas is there, according to the BBC.
Beyond the financial gains to be found inside the Arctic are the ones to be found traveling through it. If icebreakers can carve out navigation pathways through the northernmost tip of the world, entire new shipping lanes become possible, reducing travel times and costs. Those ships could potentially be military as well, making strike capabilities faster and easier. The importance of a warming Arctic is real.
Though Russia is currently the top dog at the top of the world, it lacks the processing and manufacturing infrastructure to take advantage of the resources there. China, meanwhile, does have the infrastructure, but lacks access and expertise to the region. The two powers are starting to forge partnerships in the far north, but how well they can actually work together remains to be seen.
America wants in
The declining commercial maritime power of the U.S. has been a cause of concern across parties and administrations. Right now, a bill with bipartisan sponsorship is making its way through Congress. Called the Shipbuilding and Harbor Infrastructure for Prosperity and Security for America Act (SHIPS for America, get it?), it would create a tax credit for making vessels and establish a trust fund to invest in those companies. Basically, since the invisible hand of the market made shipbuilding in America untenable, the government would just create its own incentives to do it.
Icebreakers are core to this effort. In July 2024, the U.S., Canada, and Finland agreed to the Icebreaker Collaboration Effort Pact (ICE Pact, get it?), in which these three government agreed to share expertise on this particular vessel type. That was reaffirmed in March 2025, meaning that both the Biden and Trump administrations found it to be a priority.
Davie Shipbuilding clearly saw an opportunity here and intends to spend $1 billion on the Texas shipyards that it plans to acquire. While we won’t know for a while how many ships their facility could potentially build, any number is welcome, given that the U.S. Coast Guard has bought exactly one new icebreaker in the last 25 years. Well, new to the Coast Guard, anyway — the ship is actually used.
American-made, sort of
If the deal goes through, then at last we’ll have good old fashioned American icebreakers made by Americans in America again. Right? Well, sort of. The shipyards might be in Texas, but Davie Shipbuilding is Canadian. Well, sort of, because Davie is actually owned by Inocea, which is British. And since Davie also owns Helsinki Shipyard in Finland, it will most likely tap a number of Finnish icebreaker experts for its Texas operations.
Why send in the Finns? Turns out, icebreaker ships are a Finnish specialty. The Scandinavian nation, which borders the Arctic, has been involved in the building of 80% of the world’s icebreakers, per the Wall Street Journal. That ICE Pact mentioned above is about sharing expertise, but most likely, that means the Finns sharing what they know with their North American friends. In addition, while Finland used to sell vessels to both the West and Russia, the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 put an end to the latter. It also lead to Finland joining NATO. While it’s a small country, in the Arctic, Finland may tip the balance of power.
What all of this means in the long-term for the once-peaceful icecaps, only time will tell. Historically, a bunch of governments and corporations competing over precious resources in a limited area doesn’t exactly end well. However, if Russia has the ability, and China has the money, then they will certainly at least try to develop the region. The U.S., at a bare minimum, needs to be able to stake a claim.