WASHINGTON, April 20 (Portal) – Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is expected to run for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, will embark on a foreign tour on Saturday that will take him through Japan, South Korea, Israel and the United Kingdom.
While the trip is officially billed as a trade mission, the tour is widely viewed as an attempt to brush up on its foreign policy credentials ahead of an official announcement expected in late spring or early summer.
The governor had said in March the Ukraine war was a “territorial dispute” and not of strategic interest to the United States, a position he has since partially retracted. Those comments provoked criticism from Democrats and many Republicans, though it’s a stance he shares with about half of the party’s base, as well as former Republican President Donald Trump.
In Japan, DeSantis will meet Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi during his April 24-25 visit, the Japanese Foreign Ministry said. He is then scheduled to travel to Seoul, where he will meet with Prime Minister Han Duck-soo before continuing to Tel Aviv and London, where he will speak with a mix of government and business leaders.
Back in Florida there are signs that he is beginning to build a foreign policy apparatus. His political operation is in the process of hiring Dustin Carmack, a cybersecurity and intelligence expert with significant foreign policy experience, said a person with knowledge of the matter.
DeSantis traveled to Washington earlier this week to meet with Republicans in the US House of Representatives. Shortly after his visit, several Florida officials backed Trump in a crackdown on the governor. DeSantis will speak at an event Friday hosted by the Heritage Foundation, a major think tank.
Reporting by Jim Oliphant and Gram Slattery in Washington and Yukiko Toyoda and Tim Kelly in Tokyo
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Gram Slattery