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FIRST ON FOX: The State Department has spent nearly $100 million less on travel this year than last amid a wider effort to trim budgets, according to documents exclusively obtained by Fox News Digital.
From January to September 2024, the Biden administration State Department spent $306 million on foreign and domestic travel. At the same point this year, the department under President Donald Trump spent $212 million, according to documents seen by Fox News Digital.
Some $37 million in cuts was focused on domestic travel, largely driven by a decrease in conference attendance, which made up nearly $7 million of the cuts.
Site visits and consultations within the U.S. also decreased by around $14 million and domestic special mission travel was down around $5.5 million.
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Overseas travel decreased from $206 million from January-September 2024 to $149 million.
Site visits and consultations overseas were down around $12.5 million and travel for training was down around $15 million.
“The Trump Administration has consistently been on the side of the American people and the American taxpayer, and these numbers prove that,” principal deputy spokesperson Tommy Piggot said.
“We believe in real diplomacy, not meetings for the sake of meetings.”
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This travel-spending decline comes amid a broader effort by the Trump administration to shrink the department’s footprint and reduce overseas commitments. In April 2025, the Office of Management and Budget wrote a memo recommending the combined budget of the State Department and USAID be cut nearly in half in the upcoming fiscal year.
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The plan would reduce the budget from about $55 billion to $28.4 billion, slash funding for humanitarian assistance and global health programs by more than 50%, and potentially shut down or significantly scale back dozens of U.S. missions abroad.
And as of July, the department had initiated layoffs of over 1,300 domestic staff.
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