President Lee arrived in San Francisco, the first stop on his tour, on July 24 for back-to-back meetings with leaders of the global AI industry, including Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and Broadcom CEO Hock Tan.

Lee then unveiled the San Francisco AI Declaration at the city’s AI Summit, outlining his vision and commitment to making Korea an irreplaceable player in the global AI ecosystem. At the same event, he led a discussion on the declaration and introduced several major AI projects currently underway in Korea.

During the meetings, Korean companies and American tech giants also signed a series of memoranda of understanding (MOUs). Taken together, the cooperative agreements were worth USD 950 billion, spanning semiconductors, AI data centers and physical AI.

Lee continued working to strengthen economic cooperation with successive visits to three South American countries, beginning with Brazil.

On July 27, Lee held a summit with Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. At the summit, the two leaders agreed to significantly expand cooperation in supply chains, defense, space and high-tech industries. They also reaffirmed their commitment to implementing the 2026–2029 Action Plan to advance the Korea-Brazil Strategic Partnership, agreeing to explore more mutually beneficial cooperation in such areas as supply chains for critical minerals.

On July 30, Lee traveled to Chile for a summit with President José Antonio Kast, who took office earlier this year. The two leaders agreed to reactivate the joint committee overseeing Korea and Chile’s free trade agreement (FTA) for the first time in a decade, with the goals of modernizing the FTA and strengthening their strategic partnership. They also signed five MOUs, including one establishing a mineral resources partnership, and agreed to elevate their bilateral resources cooperation committee to the ministerial level to substantially expand cooperation on future industries and critical-mineral supply chains.

Lee concluded his trip with a visit to Argentina on July 31. After being officially welcomed at the Casa Rosada, Argentina’s presidential palace, he held a summit with President Javier Milei.

The two leaders agreed to begin importing Argentine crude oil, expand energy supply chains and boost cooperation across the value chain for critical minerals including lithium. Significantly, they finalized an agreement to prevent double taxation, easing the burden on Korean companies operating in Argentina, and agreed to resume negotiations on a trade agreement between Korea and Mercosur (the South American trade bloc) aiming for tangible results in trade, investment, AI and defense.