TOKYO — Gov. Wes Moore launched into a weeklong trade mission in Japan and South Korea on Saturday at 311 miles per hour.

Riding a test version of a high-speed magnetic levitation train that both Japanese and Maryland officials have long sought to bring to the United States, the Democratic governor kicked off a packed schedule of meetings with Asian businesses, diplomats and Marylanders abroad.

“I can explain, I think, the feeling of our entire delegation with one word. And that’s ‘Wow,’” Moore told his Japanese hosts after he and two dozen other Maryland officials and private sector leaders finished riding and viewing the fastest train in the world.

Moore’s first major international economic development trip arrives at an extraordinary moment — for both the state and country he represents, and for his own time in office.

The governor has made growing Maryland’s economy his “north star” while facing strong headwinds and a looming reelection campaign. In a legislative session that finished just days ago, he came up short on parts of that goal.

President Donald Trump, meanwhile, has dismantled the country’s global trade relations, imposing tariffs that put economic strains on allies just as Moore looks abroad to help reverse a struggling economy back home.

In the 48 hours before Moore left to fly across the Pacific Ocean on Thursday — and while his team was already in Japan preparing for his visit — the markets in Asia and across the world tanked and rebounded, unsettled by Trump’s universal tariffs and their partial reversal.

In Japan, Maryland’s second-largest trading partner and where Moore will stay until Tuesday night, Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba did not publicly push back with retaliatory tariffs after getting hit with a 24% tariff from Trump. When the president backed off most of the tariffs Wednesday, he said those who don’t retaliate will be “rewarded.”

“When we first started planning this out we did not anticipate that we’d be in the middle of a trade war,” Moore told reporters just before his flight to Tokyo.

As the chief executive of the 17th-largest economy in the United States, Moore is unlikely to have much leverage in the international tariff policy debate.

But he said he’s well aware of the implications of Trump’s actions, which he is joining opponents in calling a “national sales tax.” Before his political career, Moore studied international relations as a Rhodes Scholar two decades ago and worked as an investment banker in London and New York.

Tariffs, he said, are an important tool to get to an economic “destination.” What Trump is doing, using them as an “ideology,” is just “erratic,” he said. Impacts are already happening for businesses across Maryland, from farmers on the Eastern Shore to the companies that rely on the Port of Baltimore.

Moore said the timing of his visit could help reassure Maryland’s partners overseas.

“I do want for our partners to know we take not just economic growth but diplomacy and friendship seriously,” Moore said.

The image of Moore, the diplomat, will come just before the kickoff of his reelection campaign in Maryland next year, and about three years before what some believe could be his own presidential bid.

Moore has rejected the thought that he will run for president, stressing in comments to The Baltimore Sun last week that he was not running for the office in 2028.

Instead, he’s tried to use his political capital this year on the type of economic development work that he will continue this week.

Maryland has seen some momentum with unemployment rates and startup launches, but the state has also severely lagged its neighbors in economic growth, Moore and other officials have warned. Legislation and budget proposals he sponsored during his third legislative session aimed to invest more than $100 million in emerging industries like cyber and quantum computing, two areas of focus this week. They also sought to quicken the pace of permitting and reduce regulatory burdens for both businesses and housing development.

The Maryland General Assembly ultimately did not pass the regulatory bills, leading to Moore’s harshest comments to date against his Democratic allies in the legislature. At the same time, the business community critiqued the governor for backing ideas like expanding corporate taxes and a sales tax targeting the kinds of technology companies he says he supports.

“My north star has not changed. We are going to focus on economic growth,” Moore said before leaving for his trip, which is expected to cost about $250,000.

The itinerary this week has been crafted to strengthen existing partnerships and embark on new ones — reaffirming decades-long relationships like with Maryland’s Japanese “sister state” Kanagawa and announcing commitments for new investments in a struggling local economy back home.

A mission-accomplished “trade mission,” he said, will mean Maryland businesses having more options for selling their goods and services, and for Japanese businesses to see a path for doing the same in Maryland. It will mean “diversifying” in a way that helps the state grow, he said.

Moore has not yet said specifically what that success might look like — such as the dollar amount or timeline of any commitments — by the end of the week.

His first day of activities did not include any such announcements, though it may have symbolized the difficulty with achieving certain types of economic growth through foreign partnerships.

Two hours from their Marriott hotel in downtown Tokyo, the governor and 22 other members of Maryland’s traveling delegation spent Saturday morning in a briefing and then riding the country’s high-speed magnetic levitation train.

Japanese officials and American companies have been trying to build the 300-mile-per-hour train in the United States for years, with a first leg between Washington and Baltimore eventually taking just 15 minutes.

Moore said he and his team would be “very excited partners to be able to continue to push forward” with the project. Former Gov. Larry Hogan made a similar announcement after his visit to the same location a decade ago, which he followed by pursuing a $28 million grant to study the project’s feasibility. Those studies and other plans have been repeatedly delayed, pushing off what was estimated as a $10 billion effort 10 years ago.

Moore did not announce any specific plans for funding efforts for the “maglev” train Saturday.

A formal “memorandum of understanding” outlining existing or new partnerships will be part of other events in Tokyo and Seoul. Those include MOUs signed by Salisbury University and the Japan Study Abroad Foundation on Sunday, and the University of Maryland, Baltimore and Chosun University on Wednesday. Representatives from both Maryland institutions are in the delegation traveling with the governor.

A few hours south of Seoul, Moore will also sign an MOU with the governor of the South Gyeongsang Province to “strengthen cooperation in aerospace,” according to Moore’s schedule.

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