Donald Trump’s return to the White Home has to this point seen the U.S. president journey to international lands to signal billion-dollar deals, attend lavish royal welcomes and try to forge elusive peace agreements amid conflicts and crises. And on Sept. 17, 2025, he’s anticipated to go to the UK for a second state visit with King Charles III hosted at Windsor Fortress.
In the meantime, leaders from internationally have visited the White Home throughout Trump’s second time period. Examples embrace everybody from El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, who visited in April, to Jordan’s King Abdullah II, who came to Washington in February. And all eyes have been on the recent summit in Alaska between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
After all, this represents solely a fraction of the full miles clocked by prime ministers, presidents and different heads of state and authorities. However what can we be taught from the journey tendencies of world leaders?
With our colleagues on the College of Denver’s Pardee Institute for International Futures, we’ve got meticulously cataloged each identified, noticed abroad journey taken by the first heads of presidency and state from greater than 200 international locations from 1990 by way of 2024. Our Country and Organization Leader Travel dataset is a first-of-its-kind, publicly available dataset that permits us to totally study the causes, penalties and patterns of high-level chief diplomacy.
Even a cursory look illustrates how a lot the world has modified in latest a long time. One of many first journeys within the COLT dataset is former Czechoslovakian Prime Minister Marian Calfa’s go to to the German Democratic Republic on the day after New Yr’s Day 1990. Neither nation exists any longer. One of many more moderen journeys in COLT is a November 2024 go to to Azerbaijan by the president of Montenegro, neither of which nation existed as an impartial entity till 1991 and 2006, respectively.
Listed below are just a few broader classes we’ve got discovered so removed from the greater than 100,000 journeys taken by world leaders prior to now 35 years.
Who and the place reveals geopolitical tendencies
The journey patterns of leaders are a robust indicator of their priorities and perceived significance of different nations. Many leaders have made a degree to get face time within the White Home in america, for instance, whereas far fewer have made a degree of visiting the Blue Home in South Korea.
One solution to assess a rustic’s perceived energy is thru the stability of leader-level international journey to and from the nation.
Once more, take the U.S. for instance. Our knowledge tracks over 500 abroad journeys by U.S. presidents since 1990, contrasted with greater than 6,000 visits by international leaders to america. These inbound visits to the U.S. span the spectrum from main occasions such because the annual United Nations General Assembly in New York and formal state dinners to quite a few lower-profile conferences the place a international head of presidency or state might not even safe an viewers with the U.S. president.
Crucially, the president’s assembly schedule and selections illuminate which worldwide points – equivalent to Russia’s battle in Ukraine – are paramount and which international locations and leaders maintain better strategic significance.
To know international energy dynamics extra broadly, take into account the stark distinction in web visits for the U.S. and Canada. The U.S., with 260 obtained visits versus solely seven taken by its chief, President Joe Biden, in 2024, demonstrates a excessive imbalance. In distinction, Canada displays a way more balanced diplomatic alternate. In 2024, the Canadian prime minister, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, made 13 international journeys – every nation visited counted as a singular journey – whereas the nation obtained solely 12 visits from different heads of presidency or state. This “web go to” metric affords a compelling solution to perceive a rustic’s relative significance on the worldwide stage.
Whereas the facility differential between the U.S. and Canada could also be apparent, we will conduct comparable comparisons for international locations throughout the globe.
On the opposite finish of the spectrum from the U.S. is Somalia. Its president has traveled overseas eight occasions greater than all different international locations have visited Somalia between 1990 and 2024 – 334 journeys overseas versus 40 visits obtained. Throughout that very same time interval, neighboring Kenya has roughly damaged even, with 501 presidential journeys overseas and 557 prime chief visits obtained.
Heads of state are more and more on the transfer
World leaders are additionally touring considerably greater than they did 35 years in the past. Within the Nineteen Nineties, a mean of 1,508 abroad journeys by heads of presidency or state occurred yearly. Since 2010, this common has surged to roughly 2,734 journeys per 12 months.
This enhance in international chief journey is accompanied by notable shifts in regional illustration. African leaders, as an illustration, now account for a bigger proportion of complete abroad journeys. From 1990 to 1994, they composed about 20% of all world chief journey; this determine rose to roughly 30% between 2020-2024. This has coincided with Africa’s rising financial integration and continental cooperation through the African Union.
Conversely, the relative share of worldwide journey by Latin American leaders has declined. Their proportion of world chief journey fell from round 15% in 1990-1994 to about 10% for the reason that onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Like all others, Latin American leaders of as we speak on common journey greater than they as soon as did, however different leaders from different areas are touring much more.
Asian leaders present an identical relative lower, dropping from roughly 25% of all world chief journeys in 1990-1994 to simply over 17% from 2020-2024. This development for Asian leaders coincides with the favored narratives surrounding the “Asian century,” suggesting that for chief journey, the continent’s ascendance might primarily apply simply to China. As one indication of this reality, China obtained 78 visits from different international locations’ prime leaders from 1990-2000, whereas that determine from 2010-2020 was 133, a quantity that might have been increased had international journey not halted throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.
Most leaders keep on with their neighborhoods
A pivotal attribute of latest international chief journey is its predominantly intraregional nature. Leaders overwhelmingly prioritize visits to international locations inside their very own geographic areas: African leaders to different components of Africa, European leaders to international locations in Europe, and so forth.
This phenomenon matches a common development towards multipolarity, the place the geopolitical panorama is now not outlined solely by the bipolar rivalry that characterised the Chilly Struggle.
Whereas this concentrated regional diplomacy might not persistently garner front-page headlines, particularly in U.S. media retailers, it’s a essential area for reaching vital geopolitical features equivalent to enhanced commerce and funding.
The CARICOM Summit, held in Barbados in February 2025, serves as a living proof. Through the summit, Caribbean heads of presidency and state convened to handle a spread of shared regional issues, strengthen inside commerce agreements, finalize cooperation accords and deliberate on broader geopolitical considerations, underscoring the vital significance of those intraregional diplomatic efforts.
Some leaders simply need to have enjoyable
Past the strategic imperatives of statecraft, the journey patterns of world leaders sometimes reveal a major private dimension. For instance, Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa made eight journeys to the U.S. in 2024, with 4 – together with household holidays – explicitly designated as private.
One other illustrative case is that of the previous Belize Prime Minister Dean Barrow, who ceaselessly traveled to the U.S. for private engagements, starting from essential medical treatments to spare time activities, equivalent to prioritizing unique eating places just like the now-closed, as soon as celebrity-frequented Madeo in Los Angeles.
Not too long ago, Trump managed to combine enterprise and pleasure, “assembly the U.Okay. and Scottish heads of presidency in between rounds of golf,” because the BBC reported.
Jane Barlow/PA Images via Getty Images
The place leaders go tells us the place we’re headed
So, what can we make of Trump’s latest journey plans?
By way of U.S. presidents, his summer season itinerary was, on the whole, principally extra of the identical than a break with the previous mixing of geopolitics and the occasional aspect of private pursuits.
This isn’t to say that nothing has modified, nevertheless. Have been it not for the death of Pope Francis, the primary abroad journeys by Trump in his first and second phrases in workplace would have been to Saudi Arabia. This can be a sign that the Gulf area performs a broader position in Trump’s geopolitical calculations than it did for previous U.S. presidents. It might additionally merely be one other idiosyncrasy of Trump.
Regardless of the case, our COLT dataset affords broad perspective of the extremely complicated nature of world diplomacy. From high-stakes official visits to non-public journeys, understanding the place leaders go, and why, is essential to greedy the evolving panorama of worldwide diplomacy.
