Gov. Brian Kemp hardly traveled out of the U.S. during a first term dominated by the coronavirus pandemic. In his second, he’s making up for lost time.
The governor has courted automakers and battery manufacturers in South Korea, visited Georgia National Guard troops in the nation of Georgia and pitched aerospace executives at the Paris Air Show.
He’s pitched Georgia agriculture in Brazil and Argentina, talked trade in Canada and Italy, and traveled to Poland for the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.
And this week he traveled to Chile and Peru, where he met with business executives and government officials.
The contrast between his two terms is striking. Kemp’s first overseas missions took him to South Korea and Germany in 2019 and 2020. Then the pandemic and his reelection campaign effectively put global travel on hold.
His second term brought a more furious pace. Within about six months of winning reelection, Kemp had traveled to Switzerland, Israel, France and the nation of Georgia.
Credit: Markus Schreiber/AP
Credit: Markus Schreiber/AP
The trips have sometimes made him a political target. In Switzerland, he shrugged off criticism from conservatives who regard the World Economic Forum in Davos as an elitist shindig, describing it as a “one-stop shop” for pitching Georgia to business leaders from around the world.
Other trips have also extended beyond traditional business recruitment. In Israel in 2023, Kemp met with President Isaac Herzog, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other senior officials while also courting Israeli technology companies.
During a 2024 return trip to South Korea, he chatted with then-President Yoon Suk Yeol and visited the Demilitarized Zone. And in February 2025, Kemp spoke at the Munich Security Conference alongside an international roster of political and defense leaders.
Some view Kemp’s international travel as an attempt to burnish his foreign policy credentials ahead of a potential 2028 campaign for the U.S. Senate or White House. Critics have said he should spend more time focusing on Georgia.
Kemp and his allies cast the travel as part of an economic strategy that has helped bring billions of dollars of investment to Georgia, even amid tensions over President Donald Trump’s trade wars.
His office points to a chain of jobs projects those trips helped secure, including a new Mercedes-Benz hub announced last year and a $2 billion plant by biopharmaceutical giant UCB earlier this year.
Here’s a closer look at Kemp’s expanding international footprint.
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