According to a Bloomberg report, it was the head of the banking giant who pitched the idea to the president. Citing unnamed sources familiar with the developments, Larry Fink offered Trump to buy the ports, whose Chinese-linked ownership had concerned the U.S. president. That concern happened to coincide with BlackRock’s ambition to expand globally in search of fresh profit opportunities and the perception that port ownership could present such an opportunity.

The finance major paid $19 billion for the ports of Balboa and Cristobal to CK Hutchinson, which is owned by one of Asia’s wealthiest individuals, Hong Kong billionaire investor Li Ka-Shing. Along with the Panama ports, CK Hutchinson will also sell its controlling stakes in 43 other ports in 23 countries, the Wall Street Journal said, quoting an unnamed source close to the seller as saying, “It was a very elegant solution. Li does not like leaving things lingering.”

Trump has had his sights on the Panama Canal ever since he won the November vote. “Has anyone ever heard of the Panama Canal?” Trump said in December. “Because we’re being ripped off at the Panama Canal like we’re being ripped off everywhere else.”

“It was given to Panama and the people of Panama, but it has provisions,” the then president-elect went on to say of the Panama Canal. “If the principles, both moral and legal, of this magnanimous gesture of giving are not followed, then we will demand that the Panama Canal be returned to us, in full, quickly and without question.”

Later, the president’s rhetoric toughened further, with him saying he would not exclude the use of force to reclaim U.S. control over the critical waterway that handles U.S. exports of liquefied natural gas to one of its key markets: Asia.

The Panama Canal was built by the United States in the early 20th century. Panama granted the U.S. the right to build and operate the canal in exchange for annual payments. Ownership over the infrastructure was passed to the Panamanian government in 1977 by President Jimmy Carter. The deal granted control over the Panama Canal to the local government under the obligation of maintaining its neutrality.

However, port ownership by a company with links to the Chinese government sparked concern about this neutrality in the new federal government, which is where BlackRock stepped in with a potential solution, according to media reports. Per Bloomberg, KKR and Blackstone were also bidders for the ports.

The Panama Canal is the shortest route for U.S. LNG sold in Asia. However, it is not always the cheapest route or the fastest. The Canal authorities charge a fee for passage through the chokepoint, and weather conditions sometimes make it impossible to use it. That happened recently when a two-year drought made navigation through the Canal challenging and led to extended delays in goods delivery.

Even so, the Panama Canal remains a key piece of infrastructure for U.S. energy exports, and there have even been discussions in recent years of boosting its capacity to handle an even greater volume of LNG exports. It is not without alternatives, however, which LNG exporters use whenever the economics of using the Panama Canal do not make sense.

As Cheniere Energy’s chief operating officer put it last year, during the worst of the drought, “We use the canal when it is economical to do so, right now it is not. Right now the market in the Far East is not supporting it, and the waiting time, with us not being a priority customer, is just not worth us using it right now.”