The US state department is to shut five foreign consulates and missions across Asia, Africa, North America and the Caribbean, drawing criticism that it is leaving a diplomatic vacuum at risk of being filled by China.
The US Congress has been served notice of the impending closures, which are being justified on cost grounds and follow a reassessment of the US’s bilateral relationships with a range of countries since Donald Trump returned to the White House in January 2025.
According to a notice served to several congressional committees, missions will close in St George’s, Grenada; Nagoya, Japan; Medan, Indonesia; Douala, Cameroon; and Winnipeg, Canada.
The closures will continue a process of cutbacks in US state department operations overseen by Marco Rubio, the secretary of state. Last year, the department fired more than 1,300 employees, including 246 foreign services officers and 1,107 civil servants.
Does the EU have EU consulates or is it country by country? It sorta feels like something where its a slam dunk thing to do. Like have EU consulate building with different offices for different countries and kinda share costs and have a more impossing prescence. Like in my city the irish consulate has some office space in a building but if all the EU countries consulate was in a building owned by the EU. That would give it just a bigger prescence.
Trump is truly dumb listening to putin like this.
