LITTLE ROCK, Ark. – Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders spent six days in England, Ireland and Belgium this month pitching Arkansas to aerospace and defense executives, her sixth overseas trade mission since taking office.
The trip ran July 19 through July 24 and centered on the Farnborough International Airshow, one of the aerospace industry’s two largest annual trade events. The show rotates between Farnborough, near London, and Paris. It was Sanders’ second visit to Farnborough as governor.
Aerospace and defense is Arkansas’ largest manufactured export category. The Arkansas Economic Development Commission puts the sector’s export value at $890 million in 2022 and counts more than 150 aerospace and defense companies operating in the state. U.S. Census Bureau data ranks aerospace products and parts as the top export product for Arkansas and 11 other states.
Agriculture moves more value overall. The U.S. Department of Agriculture put Arkansas’ domestic agricultural exports at $4.1 billion in 2024, 14th among the states. The two figures come from different measurement systems, and agricultural exports are counted across many commodities including rice, soybeans and poultry rather than as a single category.
“International trade missions offer our team the chance to pitch Arkansas in-person to some of the largest companies in the world,” Sanders said in a July 13 statement announcing the trip.
What she did
Sanders documented much of the mission on her social media accounts as it happened, posting photographs from the airshow floor at Farnborough and from stops in Ireland, including meetings with U.S. ambassadors.
“Great to see Arkansas’ own Ambassador Warren Stephens at the air show in Farnborough,” she wrote in one post, praising his work representing the state and the country. Stephens, the U.S. ambassador to the United Kingdom, is the former chief executive of Little Rock-based Stephens Inc.
The most fully documented event of the mission came July 20, when Sanders appeared in a fireside chat at Farnborough alongside Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger. The Aerospace Industries Association hosted the discussion, and AIA President and CEO Eric Fanning moderated. AIA published an account of the panel with direct quotes from both governors.
Both governors described aerospace and defense as strategic industries for their states and pointed to workforce pipelines as the central competitive question.
“Our number one export is aerospace and defense,” Sanders said, according to an AIA account of the event. “We love that we get to say that we’re playing a part in the protection and the defense of our country.”
Sanders said Arkansas is trying to reach students earlier in the education pipeline.
“We know if we’re starting when they’re seniors in high school, you’ve already lost,” she said. “We want them either to be enrolled, enlisted, or employed.”
She also framed veterans as a target workforce for the industry and said the state’s job is to remove friction for employers.
“It’s my job to make it easier for a company to operate in my state, not harder,” Sanders said. “We say we’re open for business, but we’re proving it day in and day out by creating an environment where a company wants to be.”
Who was on the schedule
The governor’s office said before the trip that Sanders would meet with executives from Lockheed Martin, RTX, Radius Aerospace, General Dynamics, Hanwha and Kingspan, along with other prospective investors. Kingspan is an Irish building products manufacturer. Hanwha is a South Korean defense and industrial conglomerate.
Her announced schedule also included panel appearances hosted by the Irish-American Chamber and the Belgian-American Chamber, and meetings with Irish Taoiseach Micheal Martin; Andrew Puzder, U.S. ambassador to the European Union; Stephens; Edward Walsh, U.S. ambassador to Ireland; and Bill White, U.S. ambassador to Belgium.
The governor’s office has not released a formal readout of those meetings beyond Sanders’ own social media posts.
Who traveled and who paid
Sanders was joined by First Gentleman Bryan Sanders, Chief of Staff Gretchen Conger, Deputy Chief of Staff Judd Deere and an AEDC delegation led by Commerce Secretary Hugh McDonald and AEDC Executive Director Clint O’Neal.
Spokesman Sam Dubke declined to provide an estimated cost for the trip. He said the AEDC Foundation, the Department of Commerce and the governor’s office would cover expenses, as they have for past governors’ economic development missions.
The AEDC Foundation is a private nonprofit, which places part of the funding outside the reach of the state’s public records law. Separately, a 2023 law signed by Sanders shields from disclosure records concerning the planning or provision of security services to the governor and other state elected officials, which covers a portion of the travel record for any out-of-state trip.
The track record she is running on
Sanders has consistently cited three previous airshow-linked wins:
- Dassault Falcon Jet’s $100 million expansion in Little Rock, adding 800 jobs
- RTX’s manufacturing facility in East Camden, announced at $33 million and later expanded to $63 million
- Taber Extrusions’ $60 million expansion in Russellville, adding 70 jobs
The Taber announcement was made from the stage at the 2024 Farnborough show. The East Camden RTX facility sits inside south Arkansas’ defense manufacturing corridor at the Highland Industrial Park, the same complex that anchors Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics operations in Calhoun and Ouachita counties.
Trade mission announcements often lag the trip itself by weeks or months. Dassault Falcon Jet’s Little Rock expansion was formally announced in December 2023, roughly six months after the Paris Air Show meetings the governor’s office credits for it.
As of Sunday, no investment or expansion had been announced from this month’s trip. The governor’s newsroom has posted nothing about the mission since her return.
