Trump wall funding being diverted from Guam

WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump is raising a large chunk of the money for his border wall with Mexico by deferring several military construction projects slated for Guam.

About 7 per cent of the funds for the 3.6 billion dollar (£2.9 billion) wall are being diverted from eight projects in the US territory. Guam, which has a population of around 160,000, is a a strategic hub for US forces in the Pacific.

The administration has vowed it is only delaying the spending, not cancelling it. But Democrats in Congress, outraged over Trump’s use of an emergency order for the wall, have promised they will not approve money to revive the projects. “The fact is, by literally taking that money after it had been put in place and using it for something else, you now put those projects in jeopardy,” said Carl Baker, executive director of Pacific Forum, a Honolulu-based foreign policy think tank. The Senate on Wednesday passed a measure blocking Trump from raiding the military construction budget for the wall. The Democratic-controlled House passed the bill on Friday, but Trump is expected to veto it as he did with an identical measure in March.

The tiny island of Guam holds a naval base with fast attack submarines and an Air Force base with bombers that rotate in from the mainland. The US currently plans to start moving 5,000 Marines there from Okinawa in southern Japan around 2025. But the diverted funding may disrupt plans to move Marines to Guam from Japan and to modernise munitions storage for the Air Force. This is part of a decades-long effort by Tokyo and Washington to relieve the congested Japanese island’s burden of hosting half the US forces stationed in Japan. The total cost of relocating the Marines is 8.7 billion dollars (£7.1 billion), of which Japan is paying 3.1 billion (£2.5 billion).