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Canada has paid for most of the Great Lakes water transportation systems but those systems have benefited the US economically.The internal, navigable river system made water transportation relatively inexpensive both historically and today and this has had significant economic advantages for the US.The US invested heavily in Great Lakes water transport systems to ensure that we had a northern shipping route that could connect to the intercoastal waterway on the Gulf coast.The intercoastal waterway offers sheltered ports that allow transportation all along the US Gulf and Atlantic coasts and allows products from the middle of the country to get to the coast efficiently and cheaply.

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