SEOUL, South Korea — After a week full of carefully constructed flattery, it was a faux pas that left a dozen Marylanders and their leader with nothing left to do but grumble and laugh.
“I don’t know whether you’re a fan of the Steelers or not,” said the representative of a Korean military aircraft manufacturer as he showed an image of the Baltimore Ravens’ rival winning the 2006 Super Bowl during a presentation.
“No,” Gov. Wes Moore said, elongating the “o” in a low, quiet voice to himself.
The blip in what otherwise appeared to be a successful two-way charm offensive during Moore’s $250,000 trade trip to Japan and South Korea came in one of its final moments. Whether the adulation and gift-giving will translate into deals that spur the kinds of economic growth that inspired the voyage, though, is another question.
Moore returned Friday to a state that has struggled to keep up economically. After years of lagging growth and the new threat of the Trump administration dismantling federal government support, the governor set his sights abroad.
He sold a narrative not about struggle but about momentum; not about the technology-focused tax that’s on his desk to sign into law but about what he sees as a Maryland-based tech sector with unbound potential; not about his plans to wean the state off its reliance on the federal government but about the invaluable proximity to federal agencies for foreign companies looking to make a move to the states.
His methods may have looked familiar to those who’ve seen him in action back home.
The cheerleading governor lavished praise on his hosts at every stop. In two countries where formality and politeness are sacrosanct, Moore greeted and thanked many in their languages. He bowed and pulled them in for handshakes or hugs and nodded along to both their presentations — often conveyed through an interpreter.
An Orioles jersey and a red carpet
Moore gave the head of South Korea’s NASA equivalent a Maryland flag that once flew over the State House, and he delivered to a Japanese governor a jersey of the Orioles’ Japanese-native pitcher Tomoyuki Sugano. He invited more than one dignitary to an Orioles game, leaning into a shared love of baseball and saying after a meeting with Japan’s chief cabinet secretary how “beautiful [it is] to see how sports diplomacy really does matter.”
His counterparts returned the favor and then some. They displayed his slogans of “leave no one behind” and “winning the decade” on signs and PowerPoints. They quoted his book, “The Other Wes Moore,” to him on at least two occasions (Though one, a Japanese government official, said he hadn’t quite finished it). They wined and dined and rolled out the literal red carpet.
“Hello, my friend, how are you?” Moore said to the Gov. Park Wan-su of Maryland’s South Korean “sister-state” after emerging from a four-hour car ride across the country to find himself bombarded with a 17-person military band playing “The Stars and Stripes Forever.” At the same time, dozens of people waved Maryland flags around a red carpet under a three-story-tall welcome banner draped over the front of the government building. After a lunch featuring both octopus in red pepper sauce and Korean beef striploin, one of the delegation’s cars was loaded up with plush astronaut bunnies representing the regional aerospace industry they discussed.
How far the pleasantries will take either Maryland or its foreign partners is still unclear.
What deals did Moore make in Asia?
Moore revealed a few new economic development-focused deals while abroad, though he only personally signed two of the seven “memorandums of understanding” he touted. One of the two was a broad commitment to work with the Korean sister-state, Gyeongsangnam-do, on advancing aerospace initiatives and the other with the Japanese sister-state, Kanagawa, also broadly reaffirming a commitment to work together in specific industries.
Two of the MOUs were study abroad or other education-focused agreements between Salisbury University and the Japanese Study Abroad Foundation, and between the University of Maryland, Baltimore and Chosun University in South Korea.
The other three involved IonQ, a College Park-based quantum computing company that is the first of its kind to be publicly traded and that is also set to benefit from about $47 million in the next state budget. Moore’s embrace of the single company and its chairman was effusive.
At both a Tokyo office building and the ritzy Grand InterContinental Seoul Parnas hotel, he pitched their work to Japanese and Korean quantum groups as transformative. The MOUs, however, had already been settled and aimed not just at expanding the company’s Maryland footprint but also at growing in Asia.
One of their new agreements, for instance, will mean partnering with the South Korean company Intellian to build out a ground-based quantum network that IonQ Chairman Peter Chapman said will enable drones to be operated in war zones using a “secure quantum network.” He said the deal will complement another South Korean company, IDQ, which IonQ has acquired, and, when finalized soon, will bring the Maryland company its first 20 employees in South Korea.
“We’re going to have to figure out how to pay tax,” Chapman said on the other side of the table from the Korean executives. “We’ll work it out. We can get that worked out pretty quickly.”
Moore told reporters afterward that he was thankful that his Commerce team helped connect IonQ with Intellian and that it was reflective of “putting wins up on the board” and producing “real results.”
What’s next?
Other “fruits of this trip will show themselves not in years but in months and in weeks,” Moore vowed.
While he leaned heavily on IonQ and the quantum-focused University of Maryland as draws for businesses looking to come to the states, the delegation’s sales pitch may have focused more than anything else on the element of the state’s economy that Moore separately claims he wants to move away from.
Federal government cuts, from the workforce to agency grants, have posed an existential threat in Maryland since Trump took office in January. Hundreds of millions of dollars scheduled to flow into the state have been eliminated, paused or made vulnerable — including for agencies like the National Institutes of Health and universities like Johns Hopkins. Republicans have praised Moore for saying it’s time for the state to stop relying so much on federal employment and other spending.
But much of his administration’s pitch abroad hung on the strength and proximity of those agencies and institutions, some of which — such as the University System of Maryland — have also seen budget cuts at the state level this year.
“Maryland had a thriving community of innovative high-tech businesses in several key industries,” Commerce Secretary Harry Coker Jr. said in back-to-back days of investment seminars in Tokyo and Seoul. “Our leadership in these areas is driven by assets including our colleges and universities, our federal facilities and our military installations.”
It was a message that resonated, at least for the Japanese and Korean companies who already have a presence in the state and who also gave presentations that all attempted to answer the question, “Why Maryland?”
“You need to turn your eyes to Maryland for these strategic advantages,” Intellian CEO Eric Sung said through an interpreter while presenting at one of the seminars and networking events with about 45 Korean business representatives.
The point was underscored both when Maryland officials were pitching and being pitched.
At the headquarters of the defense contractor and manufacturer Korean Aerospace Industries, or KAI, Moore was dazzled by a tour of the company’s offices and 232,000 square foot hangar where fighter jets were being assembled by hand. A 20-minute mid-tour presentation in a conference room finished with this question: Would Maryland’s leader support KAI’s bid with Bethesda-based Lockheed Martin on a contract to provide its T-50 supersonic jets to the Navy?
The image of former Steeler Hines Ward winning it all was meant to symbolize the realized deal — “a product born to an American father and a Korean mother.”
Moore, an Army vet who served in the 82nd Airborne, was in his element more than any other point in the trip. He didn’t hesitate, even before he had the chance to climb into the cockpit of the T-50 supersonic jet or take home a model version as a gift.
“Absolutely. And I’d love to go for a ride,” Moore said when asked if he would “be a champion” for KAI’s bid.
In the jet named the “Golden Eagle” a few minutes later, Moore beamed and, for his final official act in Asia, said, “The new name is the Golden Crab.”
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