T Snitz Esq, newly appointed Deputy HUD Secretary, today announced the UN will be bulldozed beginning Sept 2026 and replaced with a luxury condo/hotel complex with 100,00 sf of retail and a 5-story decked parking structure. Said Spritzler Development's CEO "The UN has been wasting our time and money long enough. It's time to turn this land into a productive asset for patriotic Americans and of course, myself".
The U.N. Is Ripping America Off in New York
Trump should reopen the 1947 agreement locating its headquarters. It was a terrible real-estate deal.
By Eugene Kontorovich, WSJ
March 14, 2025 1:16 pm ET
The United Nations headquarters in New York, Sept. 13, 2021. Photo: handout/Reuters
President Trump has bemoaned the 1977 Panama Canal Treaty, which gave away strategic American territory. But what may be the federal government’s worst real estate deal of all time involved land in Mr. Trump’s front yard. The United Nations Headquarters Agreement of 1947 gave the U.N. a tax-free, quasi-extraterritorial 18-acre domain overlooking the East River in Midtown Manhattan. The Trump World Tower is right across First Avenue.
The U.S. offered to host the newly created U.N. after World War II amid a wave of optimism about the organization’s ability to prevent future wars. John D. Rockefeller Jr. donated the land, and the headquarters was built with an interest-free loan from Washington that would be worth $861 million in today’s dollars.
The 1947 agreement gave the U.N. tax-free status on some of the world’s most valuable real estate and required the U.S. to admit dictators and terrorists to its territory. In return, the U.S. got the prestige of hosting the organization and assurances that the U.N. wouldn’t fall under Soviet influence. But the Cold War is over, and the U.N. never became the global supercop of the founding generation’s fantasies. If there is still snob appeal to hosting the headquarters, it isn’t what was 78 years ago.
The language of the agreement shows what a one-sided deal it was. While the treaty acknowledged U.S. sovereignty over the territory, it insisted the “headquarters district” was “under the control and authority” of the U.N. and “inviolable” by American officials. Article 23 of the Agreement provides that “the seat of the United Nations shall not be removed from the headquarters district unless the United Nations should so decide.” Some say this means the U.S. can’t evict the U.N.
But the agreement is a treaty, and the default rule of international law is that a treaty, unless they say otherwise, lasts until one party withdraws from it. If the U.S. cancels the treaty, the entire arrangement disappears. Nothing in the treaty’s text prohibits such withdrawal. Indeed, the idea of an irrevocable agreement seems not to have arisen at all in the negotiations. Congress, which in passing the law needed to approve the agreement, said nothing about it being an eternal concession.
While the treaty refers to the “permanent” headquarters of the U.N., this simply means “durable.” Many international treaties use “permanent” this way, to mean long-lasting, not eternal. The Permanent International Court of Justice lasted from 1922-46.
The U.N. bureaucrats who enjoy residence in the U.S. won’t give up without a fight. They would likely try to get the International Court of Justice to rule that the agreement can’t be canceled. The Hague has consistently rendered poorly reasoned decisions hostile to the U.S. As part of the U.N. system, it will be solicitous to the Turtle Bay bureaucracy. But if the International Court of Justice says the treaty can’t be canceled, then the law authorizing it is almost certainly unconstitutional.
In U.S. law, the only obligations with real permanence are those in the Constitution. Even for those, there is a process of amendment. The U.N. agreement was adopted through ordinary legislation—it isn’t clear how it could be unchangeable by subsequent democratically elected governments.
A recurring argument against U.S. disengagement from the U.N. is that the organization would fall under China’s control. That isn’t an issue with the headquarters agreement. There is no reason to think thousands of U.N. officials would be willing to decamp to Beijing.
Mr. Trump says he wants to take back the Panama Canal, but Turtle Bay is closer. As his administration reviews the U.S. relationship with the U.N. and other international organizations, the headquarters agreement shouldn’t escape scrutiny. There may still be reason to host the U.N., but it need not be on the same terms as in 1947. If Mr. Trump is willing to use cancellation of the agreement as leverage, he can get a much better deal for both New York and the U.S.
Mr. Kontorovich is a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation and a professor at George Mason University Scalia Law School.
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