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Texas could lose 370,000 jobs and $47 billion a year in GDP because of Trump’s tariffs

Posted: Mon Mar 24, 2025 9:05 pm
by planosteve
The Trump Administration has been moving aggressively to impose tariffs on select foreign countries from the earliest days of the presidency. If you aren't yet familiar with the economic tool, tariffs are taxes on imported goods such as raw materials, which businesses pay when they bring items into the country. In practice, most companies ultimately pass on these extra costs to consumers so as to avoid reducing their own profit margins.

Unfortunately, tariffs can affect the economy in direct and indirect ways, making the risk of a recession or downturn greater because of the added burden on the economy as a whole.

The Trump Administration put 25% tariffs on both Mexico and Canada in March, before pulling back and exempting many goods (though Trump maintains he may impose them in the future). While the administration has slapped tariffs on other countries too, Canada and Mexico remain hardest hit. These and other countries are now responding with their own reciprocal tariffs.

While the entire U.S. could be affected by these tariffs from all sides, there's one state in particular that could be disproportionately impacted: Texas.

What makes Texas especially vulnerable to tariffs
"Texas would by far be the state that's hardest hit by these tariffs," Ray Perryman, CEO of economic research company, The Perryman Group, told CBS. "We buy a lot of things from Mexico. Mexico buys a lot of things from us. For the last 30 years, we've stitched these economies together. They're really integrated in some fundamental ways. And when you rip those seams apart, you're going to start seeing some pretty significant impacts."

So how could tariffs impact the Lone Star State specifically?

Mexico has been the top trading partner of Texas for almost 20 years. The Office of the United States Trade Representative revealed that Texas exported $123.5 billion in goods to Mexico in 2024, with those goods accounting for 27% of all the exported goods statewide. Canada was the state’s next biggest trading partner, with $36.6 billion in trade, followed by Netherlands, South Korea, and China.

https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/texas ... tent=other