April 28, 2024
Gov. Brian Kemp is talking up Georgia to foreign business and political big wigs for the second January in a row.
Kemp is spending the week in Davos, Switzerland, attending the World Economic Forum, meeting business executives and political leaders and taking part in discussion panels.
“We get a lot of value being able to see, talk to, and pitch a lot of people in one place,” Kemp told Capitol Beat Tuesday in an exclusive interview from Switzerland. “The exposure we get is really helpful selling the state.”
The trip includes meetings both with executives from companies with an existing presence in Georgia and those that might be interested in setting up shop in the Peach State.
On Tuesday, the governor met with officials from Korean automaker Hyundai, which is building a massive electric vehicle manufacturing plant west of Savannah, and multinational technology company Cisco, which has offices in Midtown Atlanta. Tomorrow, the state will host a luncheon reception for 25 companies.
Kemp also participated in a panel discussion on the EV industry, which has become a major player in Georgia with both the Hyundai plant and a manufacturing facility Rivian is building east of Atlanta along the Interstate 20 corridor.
The governor will lead Georgia’s delegation to meetings elsewhere in Switzerland later this week before heading back home on Saturday.
Kemp, a potential candidate for the U.S. Senate after his second term as governor expires in 2026, dismissed the notion that he’s out to burnish his own national and international profile by going to Davos.
“My No.-1 goal is selling our state,” he said. “That’s the reason I came to the forum.”
From Davos, Kemp had a message for state lawmakers.
“We chose a smart fiscally conservative path,” Kemp told them in a remote video hookup from Switzerland. “We need to stay on that path.”
“There are a lot of needs around our state, but revenues are not as strong as they’ve been in the past,” added Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Blake Tillery, R-Vidalia. “We need to be sure we’re prudent with the state’s money.”
State Economist Robert “Bob” Buschman said the nation is likely to suffer a mild recession during the first half of this year, with the U.S. Gross Domestic Product expected to decline by 0.1% during the first quarter and 0,7% during the second quarter.
While Georgia continues to fare better than the nation as a whole in key economic indicators including inflation and unemployment, Buschman noted that much of the state’s revenue growth of the last few years was fueled by capital gains. He said he expects a significant drop in capital gains this year due to an economic slowdown.
“In a down cycle, these gains can drop very quickly,” he said.
Buschman said a mild recession likely would lead to rising unemployment in Georgia, which in turn would affect the state’s tax collections. The trend already has started, with the state reporting declining tax revenues during the first half of the current fiscal year.
But Buschman said Georgia’s unemployment rate is likely to remain below the national rate, which is projected to hit 4.3% later this year.
Kemp said the pay increases he is recommending for state and university system employees as well as public school teachers should help serve as a buffer against recession.
“With the pay raises and the jobs we’re creating, that keeps people working,” he said. “We’ll be in good shape.”
