Number of U.S. presidential visits to each country 1906-2021, by president

When inspecting the construction of the Panama Canal in 1906, Theodore Roosevelt became the first President of the United States to make an international visit while in office. Every president since then, except for Herbert Hoover (although he did visit ten Latin American countries as President-elect), has visited at least one foreign country while in office, and the number of countries visited has generally increased over time. The most commonly visited foreign countries by U.S. presidents are Canada and France, which have been visited 41 times by 13 and 12 different presidents respectively. The trips to Canada include nine separate visits by Franklin D. Roosevelt, which is the highest number of trips made by a U.S. president to any single country. While the U.S.' northern neighbor is one of the most frequently visited countries, its southern neighbor, Mexico, has only been visited 33 times. However, 14 presidents have visited Mexico, which is the highest number of individual presidents to visit a country, along with Italy. Of the ten most frequently visited countries; two border the U.S., six are in Europe, and Japan and South Korea round off the list.

International significance

The early twentieth century saw the United States emerge as a global superpower, and foreign travel by the Commander-In-Chief helped the U.S. cement their place at the front of the international stage. These trips are not simply for U.S. presidents to liaise with other world leaders, but also to oversee international trade and diplomatic affairs, and to strengthen the U.S.' image abroad by making public addresses; notable examples of this include both Kennedy and Reagan's fervent speeches in Berlin during the Cold War, and more recent holiday visits to U.S. military personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan. The first U.S. president to travel to multiple countries was Woodrow Wilson, who travelled to Europe for the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, where he oversaw the founding of the League of Nations and was the leading architect of the peace treaties between the Allied and Central Powers following the First World War. The next U.S. president to travel extensively was Franklin D. Roosevelt, who visited 25 countries during his presidency, including a number of secret journeys during the Second World War. Eisenhower became the first president to make several stops across Asia, and Lyndon B. Johnson was the first to travel around the world in one trip. During his two terms in office, Richard Nixon made significant diplomatic trips to Europe and Asia, visiting the Soviet Union and other Eastern Bloc countries at the height of the Cold War, and re-establishing political relations between the U.S. and China. Since Theodore Roosevelt's time, improvements in technology have also made it much easier and more practical for U.S. presidents to travel abroad, and lengthy trans-Atlantic journeys by ship have been replaced by high-speed air travel aboard Air Force One.

Twenty-first century

When overseeing the final years of the Cold War and the dissolution of the communist system in Europe, George H. W. Bush set the precedent for the number and frequency of international trips made by his successors; Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama all made roughly fifty international trips each, making hundreds of stops along the way. George W Bush is the most-travelled U.S. president, making 142 visits across 75 different countries; as of 2020, he is the sole president to have been received by nine of these individual countries, which is more than any other president. By March 2020, Donald Trump had made 39 visits in 25 countries, including the first ever trip by a U.S. president to North Korea; Trump's rate of travel was relatively similar to his recent predecessors, although the global coronavirus pandemic meant that he remained in the U.S. for most of his final year in office. For the same reason, it is unlikely that Joe Biden will make any international trips before the pandemic is under some measure of control.