Trump Mulls Shutdown of 27 Embassies, Consulates in Africa, Others

•PwC ends operations in nine countries on the continent

Emmanuel Addeh in Abuja

The Donald Trump administration is considering plans to close 10 embassies and 17 consulates and reduce or consolidate the staff of several other foreign missions, according to an internal State Department memo viewed by The New York Times.

The closures and other reductions outlined in the document, would pare back the American presence on nearly every continent. They represent an expansion of plans the Trump administration was working on earlier this year for closing a dozen foreign missions and laying off local staff who work in those locations, the report said.

The cuts are in keeping with Trump’s plans to reduce federal spending across the government, as well as a proposal that State Department leaders have been considering to cut nearly 50 per cent of the department’s spending.

But the new proposed reductions have raised fresh concerns that the United States will be ceding vital diplomatic space to China, including in areas of the world where Washington has a greater presence than Beijing, compromising American national security, including intelligence gathering.

Six of the embassies that the memo proposed for closure are in Africa: Central African Republic, Eritrea, Gambia, Lesotho, the Republic of Congo and South Sudan. The memo recommended transferring their functions to embassies in nearby countries.

The memo also recommended closing two small embassies in Europe — in Luxembourg and Malta — as well as the diplomatic missions in Grenada and the Maldives, and moving their portfolios to nearby countries, too.

Most of the consulates that are recommended for closure are in Europe, and they include several tourist destinations popular with Americans.

Five of the consulates are in France — in Bordeaux, Lyon, Marseilles, Rennes and Strasbourg. Two are in Germany — in Düsseldorf and Leipzig. Another two, Mostar and Banja Luka, are in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The memo also suggested closing consulates in Thessaloniki, Greece; Florence, Italy; Ponta Delgada, Portugal; and Edinburgh. Outside of Europe, it recommended closing an additional four consulates, in Douala, Cameroon; Medan, Indonesia; Durban, South Africa; and Busan, South Korea.

The memo also suggested either significantly downsizing or eliminating the U.S. embassy presence in Mogadishu, Somalia, and closing the Baghdad Diplomatic Support Center in Iraq, while reducing costs at the diplomatic posts in Baghdad and Erbil, Iraq.

If enacted, the proposed cuts would mean that the United States would have less of a diplomatic presence than China in Europe, where American outposts currently outnumber Chinese ones, according to data compiled by the Lowy Institute, a foreign policy think tank in Sydney.

It would also mean that the United States would fall further behind China’s presence in Africa and East Asia, where Chinese missions currently outnumber American ones.

Meanwhile, PwC shut operations in nine Sub-Saharan African countries last month, following a strategic review, the Big Four accounting firm said, in response to a media report that said the company exited over a dozen countries to avoid scandals.

PwC, which operates as a global network of locally owned partnerships, has shut operations in the Ivory Coast, Gabon, Cameroon, Madagascar, Senegal, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Congo Republic, Republic of Guinea and Equatorial Guinea, it said in a statement published on its website, reported by Reuters.

The accounting firm directed Reuters to the statement in response to queries on a Financial Times article published earlier that said PwC had exited multiple countries that were deemed too small, risky or unprofitable.

The decision came due to mounting differences with local partners, who said they lost over a third of their business in recent years after pressure from PwC’s global executives to drop risky clients, the FT said, citing people familiar with the matter. The PwC statement did not give a reason for the move.

The FT report, citing a register of PwC entities and local news reports, said PwC had also cut ties with member firms in Zimbabwe, Malawi and Fiji.

PwC has faced an exodus of clientele and layoffs across countries since last year. PwC’s mainland China unit was hit with a $62 million fine and six-month suspension for audit failures related to property developer China Evergrande’s  $78 billion fraud, Reuters recalled.

Last month, Britain fined PwC about $6 million in relation to the audit of Wyelands Bank for financial year 2019. The firm is working with Saudi Arabia and its sovereign wealth fund to mend relations after the kingdom suspended activities between the $925 billion fund’s holding company and PwC.