Texas

Texas Exports & Foreign Investment

 

In 2023, Texas exported not a record $444.6 billion of goods to the world.  In 2021, exports from Texas supported an estimated 1.0 million jobs.

 

Exports from Texas and Jobs

• Texas was the largest state exporter of goods in 2023.
• In 2023, Texas goods exports were $444.6 billion, an increase of 60 percent ($167 billion) from its export level in 2013 (latest data available).
• Goods exports accounted for 17.3 percent of Texas GDP in 2023 (latest data available).
• Texas goods exports in 2021 (latest data available) supported an estimated 1.0 million jobs. Nationally, jobs supported by goods exports pay up to an estimated 18 percent above the national average.

Manufacturing Exports from Texas and Jobs

• In 2023, Texas exported $290.9 billion of manufactured products.
• Texas exports of manufactured products supported an estimated 825 thousand jobs in 2021 (latest data available).
• The state's largest manufacturing export category is petroleum and coal products, which accounted for $70.0 billion of Texas's total goods exports in 2023.
• Other top manufacturing exports are chemicals ($58.3 billion), computer and electronic products ($52.9 billion), transportation equipment ($27.5 billion), and machinery, except electrical ($26.8 billion).

 

Exports Sustain Thousands of Texas Businesses many of which are SMEs

• A total of 40,451 companies exported from Texas locations in 2022 (latest data available). Of those, 37,305 (92 percent) were small and medium sized enterprises with fewer than 500 employees.
•  Small and medium-sized firms generated 43.9 percent of Texas's total exports of goods in 2022.

 

Texas Depends on World Markets

• The state’s largest market was Mexico. Texas exported $129.5 billion in goods to Mexico in 2023, representing 29 percent of the state’s total goods exports.
• Mexico was followed by Canada ($35.9 billion), Netherlands ($26.6 billion), China ($26.5 billion), and Korea, South ($21.1 billion).
• Texas’s exports to major world areas included:

 

 

• 53 percent of Texas’s goods exports ($234.2 billion) in 2023 went to current FTA partners. 

Agriculture in Texas depends on Exports

• Texas is the country’s 6^th largest agricultural exporting state, shipping $8.5 billion in domestic agricultural exports abroad in 2022 (latest data available according to the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture).^[1]
• Top Agricultural exports were:

 

 

International Investment Creates Jobs in Texas

• In 2021 (latest data available), foreign-controlled companies employed 660,500 Texas workers. Major sources of foreign investment in Texas included the United Kingdom, Japan and Germany.
• Foreign investment in Texas was responsible for 6.0 percent of the state's total private-industry employment in 2021.

Texas’s Major Metropolitan Areas Benefit from Exporting

In 2022 (latest data available), the following metropolitan areas in Texas recorded goods exports: Houston-The Woodlands-Sugar Land ($191.8 billion), Corpus Christi ($79.6 billion), Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington ($50.6 billion), El Paso ($36.5 billion), Beaumont-Port Arthur ($36.4 billion), Austin-Round Rock-Georgetown ($17.3 billion), San Antonio-New Braunfels ($13.2 billion), Laredo ($13 billion), Longview ($8.2 billion), Brownsville-Harlingen ($7.9 billion), McAllen-Edinburg-Mission ($5.7 billion), Waco ($965.7 million), Sherman-Denison ($736.2 million), Lubbock ($670.6 million), Amarillo ($653.4 million), Longview ($450.1 million), San Angelo ($345.3 million), Wichita Falls ($245.1 million), Killeen-Temple ($182.3 million), Texarkana ($149.7 million), College Station-Bryan ($136.2 million), Tyler ($132.7 million), and Victoria ($93.7 million).