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After a nearly two-year hiatus from international travel, Global Atlanta was finally back on the road in 2022, going abroad in pursuit of locally impactful stories for the Georgia economy.
But where to go in such a wide open world? [Jump to: Quebec | South Korea]
When choosing destinations for coverage, we always look for places with an already-strong trade and investment baseline with Georgia, as well as consular representation in Atlanta, which tends to serve as a proxy for greater vitality in the economic relationship.
It’s a bonus if the target country is the subject of a major upcoming business conference in the Southeast U.S. or hosts one of the Georgia’s 12 international offices.
And while we can dig up relevant stories in any locale, the piece that makes a place irresistible for our editorial team is its prevalence in a future-facing industry transforming our state.
Both of our destinations in 2022 ticked all the boxes on the checklist, and they shared the same industry focus, albeit each with a bit of a different spin on the electric vehicle trend.
Quebec
In June, the Southeast-U.S. Canadian Provinces Alliance, known as SEUS/CP, was scheduled to return to Georgia for the first time since its inaugural conference in Savannah 15 years ago.
That, coupled with new raft of infrastructure funding in the U.S. and incentives to shore up the EV industry here, combined to make it the ideal time to check in on a trading partnership driven in many ways by energy and cars.
Quebec, which has had an official delegate in Atlanta since 1978, seemed the perfect place to dive in. Not only had the province been Georgia’s initial driving partner on SEUS/CP years ago, but it had also made strides in becoming a proving ground for the global quest to transition to clean energy — starting with the world’s fleets. I flew up in April, and it felt like going back in time, both in terms of strict COVID compliance and from the dreary winter weather.
On a six-day trip planned with extensive help from David Weiner, the Quebec delegate, I visited factories making electric school and transit buses, vacuum trucks, forklift batteries and more. I spoke with the top investment recruiters in the province and Propulsion Quebec, a consortium of industry, government academia to spur innovation and collaboration in this electrification cluster.
At every turn, I heard about the nearly limitless, clean and cheap hydropower from the province’s vast rivers, as well as its momentum as a critical minerals supplier. The shared narrative was clear: If we — that is, North America — want to transition to clean energy, we must tidy up the inputs on the batteries that will help us cut emissions. And we should start where it makes the most sense: commercial vehicles where the business models already work.
As I wrote:
With aggressive provincial government policy, national backing, access to key minerals, strong academic research and plentiful, cheap and clean hydroelectricity, Quebec is a laboratory for the world’s transition to battery-powered mobility. If it doesn’t work here, it may not work anywhere; it’s still early days, but signs that the shift is inexorable are emerging, with potential benefits for the U.S., the biggest market for Canadian firms.
With an itinerary spanning Montreal and Quebec City, and a rental car that enabled me to become a fast-food expert traveling between them, I also spoke with leaders from Montreal’s world-leading aerospace cluster, an autonomous vehicle startup, Georgia’s men in Montreal, an innovator making vaccines from tobacco and many others.
I came away with a greater appreciation of how much more we could do with our neighbors to the north and will be heading back soon, perhaps to Ontario this time, the undisputed hub of passenger vehicle production in Canada.
The reporting trip was sponsored by the Consulate General of Canada in Atlanta.
Read more:
- Charging Toward a Revolution: Quebec’s Role in Electrifying the World’s Fleets
- Read the full Quebec trip blog
- See the event we held at the Cobb Chamber to recap the trip and foster further connections: Canada and Georgia: Teaming Up for Tomorrow
- Subscribe to monthly updates on Georgia’s business ties with Canada (click the Canada box and select any other interests) at www.globalatlanta.com/newsletters.
South Korea
In August, when I decided to head to South Korea, I’d also unwittingly picked an opportune moment that made me look much smarter than I am.
I’d been planning to go to Korea for more than two years, a trip that had been pushed back multiple times due to COVID-19.
Generously enough, the Korean Ministry of Culture and Information Services, or KOCIS, kept me on the list and provided me with all kinds of resources to carry out the trip when I was finally able to make it to Seoul, from an interpreter to in-country transportation.
Of course, I wanted to look at Kia and Hyundai, the automotive giants that have transformed Georgia with their investments over the last 15 years, but I also wanted to learn more about the new direction the bilateral relationship had taken after the Trump presidency.
During his time, the relationship with our most steadfast ally in Asia had turned testy over military commitments and steel tariffs. In the Biden era, America had become friendlier to allies but still had turned inward. It became evident that record-breaking Korean investments in the U.S. were not only a bid for market share, but also were a down payment toward fair treatment in an age of greater protectionism and a push for shorter supply chains.
I got a glimpse of that as I covered SK Battery, the first record-breaking investment in the state, to the tune of $5 billion over two phases. Little did we know that this was the first in a parade of new announcements, each one as big as the last.
They came after the signing of the Inflation Reduction Act in mid-August, a week before my trip. Transformative in so many ways, the bill carried one irritant for the Korean companies that were investing in mega-plants across the U.S.: a requirement that, even in the meantime, electric cars must be assembled in North America to qualify for a consumer tax credit of $7,500. Batteries, too, had to source most of their materials from not from China, but from countries with which the U.S. has free trade agreements.
To a person, every executive I met — whether from Hanwha, SK or the American Chamber of Commerce — made sure I went away from the conversation understanding how grave this incentive issue was in their minds.
It continues to incite hand-wringing among Korean automotive firms as they lobby for some kind of carveout, but so far, a comprehensive fix has yet to be reached. Meanwhile, they barrel ahead with billions of dollars of planned investment in Georgia and other nearby states.
Beyond the vehicle focus, I visited a Korean baseball stadium, interviewed the mayor of Atlanta’s sister city, learned about the Busan bid for the World Expo and much more. I lunched at the Foreign Correspondents Club, eyed North Korea from the DMZ, did a little Kpop dancing, drank a lot of coffee and sampled the latest tech from Kia and Hyundai.
For anyone curious, I blogged about the trip and posted a daily log about it on LinkedIn.
With the way investment trends are going, I can’t imagine it will be another 13 years (my first trip was in 2009) before I find myself back.
- Read the full trip blog
- See my Day 5 LinkedIn post
- See Global Atlanta’s Korea Channel
- Subscribe to monthly updates on Georgia’s business ties with Korea (click the Korea box and select any other interests) at www.globalatlanta.com/newsletters.