Somebody's feeding him grandiose ideas about global warming and northern sea routes. Probably some flattering lies about splitting said routes between them and dominating world trade too, once Canada and the EU are out of the way.
To be fair, China has been investing in thawing sea routes for a while, though largely to free themselves from having to pass through the US-controlled South China Sea.
I don't understand. Are you saying that the US has a hard time controlling the waters just off the coast of Alaska? I mean, I get that we don't necessarily "need" to patrol them heavily right now because of the ice, but I don't think that means it would be hard to do so if it became a priority.
Or, he recognises that arctic and subarctic territories are going to be worth much more in the future because of global warming. Trump is a major scatterbrain but in general it looks like he’s acting impulsively based on pieces of trivia, some of them being correct. Not that I agree with proposed solution to the issue but not everything he does is entirely dumb and those are very rarely inconsistent with his own interests.
He’s filthy rich now that he’s running a crypto scam for taking in bribes, so I wouldn’t say those are handlers rather than revenue streams. Other people are not in control of Trump, he’s a human wrecking ball that confuses theatre for politics, similar to general population that elected him.