President Donald Trump has canceled
a trip to London to open the new $1 billion U.S. Embassy in London, a move that avoided protests promised by political opponents.
LONDON — President Donald Trump has canceled a trip to London to open the new $1 billion U.S. Embassy in the British capital, a move that avoided protests promised by political opponents.
Some U.K. lawmakers had said Trump was not welcome in Britain after he retweeted videos from a far-right British group and criticized London Mayor Sadiq Khan following a terror attack last year.
But Trump said his decision, announced in a latenight tweet, was due to concerns about the embassy’s move from the elite Mayfair district to a far less fashionable area of London south of the Thames River.
“Reason I canceled my trip to London is that I am not a big fan of the Obama Administration having sold perhaps the best located and finest embassy in London for ‘peanuts,’ only to build a new one in an off location for 1.2 billion dollars. Bad deal. Wanted me to cut ribbon-NO!” Trump tweeted.
The State Department, however, announced plans for relocating the London embassy in 2008, while George W. Bush was still president, because of concerns about security following the Sept. 11 terror attacks.
At the time, U.S. Ambassador Robert Tuttle said the decision to move to the five-acre site came after a “long and careful process.”
While the former embassy was on Grosvenor Square, in a tony area of designer boutiques and expensive restaurants, the new building is in a former industrial area south of the Thames that is being redeveloped into a commercial and residential district.
The current ambassador, Robert “Woody” Johnson, said the change was necessary even though the U.S. had been linked to Grosvenor Square for more than 200 years.
“Security concerns after September 11 meant we had to move to a location that could better protect American citizens and our British neighbors,” he wrote in an article for London’s Evening Standard newspaper.
Johnson, a Trump appointee, also said the new embassy was entirely paid for by the sale of other London properties and “did not cost the U.S. taxpayer a cent.”
A Trump visit has been on the cards since British Prime Minister Theresa May visited the United States a few days after Trump’s inauguration last year. May proclaimed the strength of the “most special relationship” between the two countries and extended an invitation for a state visit as a guest of Queen Elizabeth II.
But a full-blown state visit replete with golden carriages and pomp has been deferred amid the threat of huge anti-Trump protests. The idea had gradually evolved into a working visit in which Trump would open the London embassy. In December, Johnson said he was looking forward to welcoming the president.
In Washington, White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Trump’s comment was solely about an embassyrelated visit. She suggested a formal visit could still take place, but offered no details.
“We are still working with our U.K. allies to find a date for a visit for the invitation that was offered and accepted,” she said Friday.
In the meantime, the relationship between May and Trump has come under strain. The uproar came after Trump retweeted three anti-Muslim videos posted by a leader of the far-right group Britain First — a tiny group that had regularly posted inflammatory videos until Twitter suspended its leaders’ accounts.
The British government said the opening of the embassy was a matter for the United States. But Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson blamed Khan and Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn for discouraging the U.S. leader from coming.