Kemp: Japan Trip Crucial for Georgia as Focus Shifts From Tariffs to Strategic Investments

As Gov. Brian Kemp welcomed Japanese Ambassador Shigeo Yamada to the State Capitol in early November, neither likely needed much of a refresher about the other. 

Just a few weeks before, the governor and the ambassador met at the Southeast U.S. Japan association conference in Tokyo, where Mr. Kemp joined his counterparts from two other Southern states and delegations from four others. 

At the event’s capstone dinner, Mr. Kemp donned a robe as he joined business and government leaders in the ceremonial opening of a sake barrel, raising a masu box of cypress wood to drink to the future of the relationship. The occasion followed Mr. Yamada’s closing remarks, which focused on the goodwill built over more than a half-century of trade and investment ties. 

That relationship was something Mr. Kemp says he’d always wanted to celebrate with an official mission to Japan, yet the October visit was the first time over his two terms that the governor had touched down in a country whose investors “employ more Georgians than any other international business community in our state,” as he noted during conference opening remarks.  

Two years ago, at the same conference, Georgia marked 50 years of its office in Tokyo without the governor in attendance.

“It’s important that I got here,” Mr. Kemp told Global Atlanta during an interview at the New Otani hotel in Tokyo, where the conference was held.  

Though he was able to welcome attendees to the SEUS conference in Savannah in 2019, visiting Tokyo been held up by COVID-19, a re-election campaign, and mega-projects from Korea that took up much of the state’s bandwidth. 

As if to prove the point, before going to Tokyo, Mr. Kemp visited Seoul to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the state’s Korea office — his third trip to that country, where companies like SK On, Hanwha and Hyundai Motor have originated multi-billion-dollar projects. 

“We’ve had so much direct foreign investment in our state, even long before I became governor. It’s just been part of who we are.”

Gov. Brian Kemp

Privately, some boosters of the Georgia relationship with Japan say the governor’s presence at the SEUS-Japan conference was critical, lest the country feel it had been pushed to the back burner even after its 400-plus companies in Georgia have undertaken some 50 expansions just in the last few years. 

For his part, Mr. Kemp said he was cognizant that the Japanese “really value relationships, partnerships, mutual trust.”

“You see the governors that were there today, they’re the ones whose states are doing really well with a lot of these companies,” Mr. Kemp said, alluding to his peers from  Tennessee and North Carolina, the latter of which saw Toyota inaugurate a $14 billion battery plant in October. 

Mr. Kemp was also tuned into the importance of the geopolitical moment. He arrived in Japan a few days before President Donald Trump, who sought to smooth out trade strife with the country’s brand new prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, the first woman to hold that role. 

Japanese companies, including many among the some 1,500 firms that have helped establish the Southeast as the new U.S. automotive belt, were on edge about 25 percent tariffs on cars and parts, as well as a separate 50 percent levy on steel and aluminum. 

Mr. Trump’s trade team negotiated a preliminary deal in August to bring them down to 15 percent, pending a $550 billion plan for Japanese investment in the U.S. 

Fact sheets both countries laid out after Mr. Trump’s visit on Oct. 29 were light on concrete commitments, save for some energy investments and off-take agreements for liquefied natural gas. The rest seemed to consist of U.S. spending involving Japanese partners, the bulk coming from a plan for “up to $332 billion to support critical energy infrastructure in the United States,” including AP1000 nuclear reactors and small modular reactors. 

Either way, speaking to Global Atlanta on that same morning, Mr. Kemp saw the announcement as “very positive,” as it provided a sense of clarity on the trade front. 

“I think the biggest thing I hear is while people may not like different aspects of the tariffs, or what have you, they also just want to have consistency and have something that’s going to be locked in, that’s not going to be a moving target,” Mr. Kemp said.

As it seeks to revive its industrial base, the U.S. has “good reasons” to continue its focus on countering China, Mr. Kemp said, but that will mean working with allies while building up its own capabilities in industries where it has lost knowhow, skilled personnel and overall supply chains.   

He cited shipbuilding, minerals and energy, especially nuclear— the very sectors touted by Mr. Trump, who said the U.S. and Japan would usher in a new “golden age” of bilateral relations. (White House Fact Sheet | Japan Ministry of Foreign Affairs Fact Sheet)

Mr. Kemp has had a front-row seat to the challenges of bringing back industries of old as Georgia Power built a new reactor at Plant Vogtle, the first coming online in the U.S. in more than 30 years. 

“We didn’t have the tradesmen who knew how to weld for a nuclear power plant, so we’ve got to develop that supply chain and that workforce, and until we do, we need to work with our allies,” he said. 

The auto industry is another example, he said, with some producers suffering from tariffs even as they try to do what Mr. Trump’s policies’ are ostensibly designed to do: bring manufacturing back to the U.S. Mr. Kemp pointed to a wiring harness they saw inside a transparent car at the Hyundai Motor Studio just outside Seoul. 

“Everybody says in the automobile business, we haven’t built a wiring harness in the U.S. in decades. The only place you can get it is low-labor markets like Mexico or wherever else. So, if we’re going to be competitive, if you penalize people for bringing in that part, it makes us less competitive when we compete with the Chinese. So I think those are the kinds of things that they’re continuing to work on.” 

Georgia is seeing investments in these strategic sectors, Mr. Kemp said, noting the recent commissioning of the Aurubis plant in Augusta as a source of U.S. copper and the announcement that JS Link, a Korean company, would build a factory for crucial rare-earth magnets in Columbus, Ga. 

These job-creating investments also build resiliency, which is one reason Mr. Kemp has been intent on getting out into the world to sell Georgia, even if that means being the only Republican at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, or the lone governor at the Munich Security Conference. Mr. Kemp has also traveled to Israel, Georgia (the country), France, Germany (previous trips) and, more recently, Brazil and Argentina, markets he sees as brimming with potential.  

No market has exemplified the transformative impact on the Southeast, driving regional economic dynamism, more than Japan, as the governor told SEUS-Japan attendees in his speech: 

Georgia welcomes companies from around the world and serves as their gateway to the United States market. A great example of that is the more than $8.2 billion in trade that flowed between Georgia and Japan just last year alone, traveling through two of the fastest growing ports on the East Coast, along Georgia’s coastline and the world’s most utilized airport in Atlanta. We’re proud of that success that’s being felt all across the southeastern United States. Our entire region has seen tremendous growth thanks to smart governance and pro-business approaches. As a result, two years ago, the Southeast region contributed more to the national GDP than the Northeast for the first time ever in the history of the country, something that continues today. 

And from 2020-23, over two-thirds of the job growth in the country was in the Southeast. Japanese companies like Bridgestone, Kojima, Kubota, Rinnai, Shimizu, TOTO, Toyota, Yokugawa Corp., YKK, and many more recognize those advantages and already employ tens of thousands of hard-working Georgians. But they aren’t just connecting Georgians with opportunity. They’re also making other valuable contributions to our communities, like sponsoring sports teams and work-based studies for students.

Or as he told Global Atlanta more simply in the interview: 

“We’ve had so much direct foreign investment in our state, even long before I became governor. It’s just been part of who we are.”

This afternoon I was honored to welcome the Japanese Ambassador to the United States, Shigeo Yamada, and the incoming Consul General of Japan, Kenichi Matsuda, to the Capitol. On the heels of SEUS-Japan, we discussed further strengthening our incredible partnership and economic… pic.twitter.com/PYnR1noERo

— Governor Brian P. Kemp (@GovKemp) November 4, 2025

While in Japan, Mr. Kemp met with companies whose collective commitments to Georgia have totaled billions of dollars: 

Mitsubishi Heavy Industry— Invested $325 million in Savannah, announced in 2009; poised to expand further as electricity demand skyrockets

Kubota— Employs more than 3,000 people in Georgia across multiple facilities operating for more than three decades in the state

Takeda Pharmaceuticals— Committed $2 billion to the state in acquiring the former Baxter site in Covington

Rinnai— Makes hot water heaters in Griffin and has a headquarters in Peachtree City

Toyo Tire— Based in Rome, with five expansions in the state over multiple decades

TOTO — Recently launched a $224 million expansion

Yamaha — Makes more than 150,000 ATVs in Newnan and also has its marine products division headquartered in Cobb County

YKK Corp. — Georgia’s first Japanese investor (maybe) has zipper and architectural projects factories in the state, including a $125 million factory in Macon

Yakult — Building a $305 million factory for its yogurt drinks in Bartow County

Yanmar — Manufacturing and R&D in Adairsville for excavators

Mizuno — Operates a state-of-the-art experience center offering club fittings in Johns Creek, as well as a distribution center in Braselton

He also met with Georgia companies investing in Japan, including Aflac, which has been in the market for more than 50 years.