Gov. Wes Moore returned to Annapolis after six days in Japan and South Korea last month with a promise: His first major international trade mission would produce results — a “tangible return on investment” that would show itself “not in years, but in months and in weeks.”

Nearly three weeks later, the Democrat hasn’t unveiled any new deals beyond the seven new or renewed agreements he touted while he was abroad. But experts say his trip —estimated to cost about $250,000 — followed a long line of overseas voyages from other governors that yielded positive benefits both in the short and long term.

“The criticism can come in the form of, ‘What was this good for?’” said Lucas McMillan, a scholar at Lander University in South Carolina, whose research has focused on governors’ international trips and the relationships between states and other countries. “But it’s unfair to think that new things don’t come out of a governor traveling abroad.”

McMillan and others said that, while it sometimes takes years for the full effects to become clear, trips like Moore’s are common, including among Maryland governors.

Before Republican Gov. Larry Hogan’s and Democratic Gov. Martin O’Malley’s several overseas trips each in the 16 years before Moore took office, Maryland governors had been traveling and opening offices in other countries since the 1980s.

From China to India, England to Israel, Singapore to the Soviet Union, every chief executive of Maryland back to at least Gov. William Donald Schaefer spanned out across the globe for the same goal. The bills for those trips, ran tens of thousands of dollars and sometimes hit six figures, like Moore’s, though the final costs to taxpayers were not always clear because of cost-sharing with different members of the delegations, or because trade missions were mixed with other purposes, according to reports.

From Schaefer to Hogan

Moore’s office said this week the administration still expected the benefits and deals from the trip to manifest on the “weeks” and “months” timeline Moore described in Asia. A final tally of costs for the 25-person delegation’s travels was also in the works, a spokesperson said. Some of Moore’s predecessors emerged from their own trips with faster, more specific announcements about development deals.

Hogan celebrated a reported $20 million in new investments in the Columbia, Maryland, headquarters of Shimadzu, a Japanese medical technology company, after returning from his first international voyage in 2015.

O’Malley boasted of $85 million in investments — both in the state and abroad — after his trip to China, South Korea and Vietnam in 2011. The Democrat’s trip to India five months later was followed by a claim of “$60 million in business deals for Maryland and several additional deals worth millions still on the horizon.”

Democratic Gov. Parris Glendening, during a 1997 trip to Israel, announced a $3 million investment not from an Israeli company but from Baltimore’s Sylvan Learning Systems in Israel — marking another key goal of getting Maryland companies access to foreign markets. (Three agreements Moore celebrated abroad were for the College Park-based quantum company IonQ’s expansions into Japan and South Korea.)

Schaefer, who reportedly traveled to 25 countries during his time in the governor’s office, returned from one Eastern European trip in 1990, showcasing a four-year agreement for a Yugoslavian shipping line to stop at the Port of Baltimore, along with multiple other announcements about Maryland businesses expanding to places like Poland.

Foreign direct investment

Progress can look different depending on the metric and the goal.

Though comprehensive state-level “foreign direct investment” (FDI) and export data over the decades weren’t immediately available, the U.S. Department of Commerce reported last fall that FDI increased by $177.5 billion in 2022. California and Texas, with their existing business climate and infrastructure advantages, represented about 30% of that new investment, the department reported.

In terms of jobs at majority foreign-owned companies in the U.S., Maryland had about 122,800 in 2022. The 19% increase in that figure from 2007, when O’Malley took office, was less than the 49% jump nationwide, according to The Baltimore Sun’s review of data from the federal Bureau of Economic Analysis.

The jobs added in Maryland from foreign investment over one recent five-year period, from 2017 to 2022, was 4%, according to the Global Business Alliance, a nonprofit organization based in Washington, D.C. That was less than each of Maryland’s neighboring states but also represented growth at a time when private sector employment declined over the same period, according to the group.

McMillan, a professor of political science and dean of the College of Behavioral and Social Sciences at Lander University in South Carolina, said his research showed governors’ travels consistently resulted in quantitative benefits, though they lagged behind the trips by one to two years. That was true whether or not there was an immediate announcement with flashy dollar figures.

“The actual money, the actual jobs created, will take some time to build into fruition,” McMillan said. “What Gov. O’Malley did is similar to what I have heard from governors themselves, which is that it was better for them politically to have an announcement ready to go … That’s just good political advice. Legislators and voters are not always patient for results.”

Politics at play

Other political considerations are also often a factor, according to experts.

For other countries, the trips can serve as a way of developing long-term political relationships with American leaders beyond the changing — and currently tumultuous — time with officials in the federal government. For governors like Moore, they can put politicians with potentially higher ambitions on a global stage.

McMillan pointed to former President Jimmy Carter, who helped set a new trend of governors more regularly looking abroad for investments in their states, he said. As the governor of Georgia before his presidency, Carter focused on Japan and at one point said he thought he devoted a quarter of his time as governor to recruiting foreign investments. Governors and future presidents, like Bill Clinton in Arkansas and George W. Bush in Texas, followed his lead.

Moore has repeatedly said he is “not running for president” in 2028, but speculation that he may change that tune has escalated since he returned from Asia.

“Gov. Moore can be absolutely committed to representing Maryland’s interests, and certainly somebody like me would say states need to view a governor as an economic ambassador because in a competitive global economy, a governor needs to do this work,” McMillan said. “But it also should be said that a governor may have his or her own political ambitions. So someone like Gov. Moore would easily know that if he wishes to run for U.S. Senate or the presidency, that travels abroad may be helpful.”

Kent E. Calder, who served as a special advisor to U.S. ambassadors to Japan during Clinton’s administration, said Moore’s status as a rising political figure in the U.S. is likely related to Japanese leaders’ interest in working with him.

But it’s also far from just a political matter, he said. The Japanese are looking for a broad range of economic ties and partnerships to diversify their own economy, said Calder, who is now a professor and director of Johns Hopkins University’s Edwin O. Reischauer Center for East Asian Studies.

Even the particularly rocky relationship between foreign nations and President Donald Trump’s administration could help secure some investments in states like Maryland, as countries like Japan and Korea try to “deflect the tensions” by looking at relationships they feel they can trust.

“That’s the interesting irony,” Calder said. “Given the trade fractions, it encourages them even more to look at the states.”

Relationships ‘mean a lot’

Moore, referencing his prior life as an investment banker and private sector CEO, repeatedly said his goal wasn’t to hit specific metrics for investment but to build trust and then watch the success fall into place.

“I want them to think first about Maryland,” he said in an interview in Tokyo when asked about the entrepreneurs he was talking with and who are looking to expand to the U.S. “I want them to feel comfortable enough that they’re making a phone call to me.”

Moore’s emphasis on in-person relationship-building — often through relentless and bilateral complimenting and gift-giving — will likely pay dividends in Asian countries that put a premium on that kind of effort, Calder said.

“Human relations mean a lot, culturally,” Calder said of the Japanese. “They value long-term relationships, and so I think it’s a challenge, but it’s an opportunity for the groups that have spent time there.”

Calder also said the timeline for that “goodwill” to show itself in terms of economic benefits could be “in the next year or two.”

Tae-hyung Kim, the commissioner of Invest KOREA, a national organization that worked with Moore during his trip, said in an interview that the “secret to doing business in Korea” is to “put relationships first.”

“The results will naturally follow,” Kim said. “Sit down, be present, and let trust create the foundation. That’s how business is truly done here, not just successfully, but very meaningfully.”

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