Japanese prime minister to visit North Carolina, highlight economic ties
Gov. Roy Cooper will host Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida next week, he announced Friday, in what Cooper described as a historic visit here by a sitting international head of state.
“We are honored and excited for the opportunity to host Prime Minister Kishida and Mrs. [Yuko] Kishida, and we welcome them and their delegation to our beautiful state,” Cooper wrote in a press release. "This historic trip will strengthen the already thriving economic, cultural and academic relationships between North Carolina and Japan."
The visit comes on the heels of the Democratic governor's own trips to Tokyo, most recently in October, to recruit more Japanese businesses to North Carolina.
Chief among them is Toyota; the auto manufacturer is building a massive factory near Greensboro to make batteries for electric vehicles. The $14 billion project has already begun hiring and is expected to fully open next year. If Toyota hits targets that include creating more than 5,000 new jobs at the plant, it stands to receive more than $1 billion worth of tax breaks and other incentives from the state and various local governments.
That and other similar efforts have put national attention on North Carolina. In November, Cooper served as the keynote speaker for the annual "Investing in America" conference hosted by Financial Times Magazine.
Cooper said North Carolina won't be Kishida's only stop stateside; he's set to travel here after a visit at the White House with President Joe Biden.
It's the second diplomatic victory for North Carolina leaders to be announced this week. On Tuesday, Democratic Secretary of State Elaine Marshall said she had just returned from Moldova, where she met with Moldovan President Maia Sandu and was awarded the Order of the Republic, the nation's highest civilian honor.
North Carolina has had an official partnership with the small Eastern European country since 1999, an arrangement Marshall spearheaded in her first term in office. She has led it ever since and noted that relations between the former Soviet state and the Tar Heel State now seem more important than ever — in light of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, which borders Moldova.
Marshall visited the country last month with 35 other North Carolinians, mostly experts in nursing and agriculture. They met with Moldovan counterparts to exchange knowledge and more generally show America's continued support for democracy in Europe, she said.
