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What does the future hold for the business climate in Texas and the Rio Grande Valley?
That question was the broad topic of discussion as the Rio Grande Valley Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, or RGVHCC, hosted the top two executives of the Texas Association of Business (TAB) at an April 24 luncheon in McAllen.
TAB President and CEO Glenn Hamer and TAB Board Chairman Massey Villarreal fielded questions from Richard Sanchez, who is associate vice president for governmental relations at UTRGV, and a board member of RGVHCC. Sanchez’s questions touched on a broad array of topics, including higher education, international trade, US-Israeli relations, infrastructure, and Texas regulatory policy.
Hamer, who has visited dozens of countries trying to lure companies to the Lone Star State, prefaced his remarks by saying, “…for the record, my favorite country is Texas,” which drew laughter and applause from a receptive audience of about 100 RGVHCC members and guests.
Both executives maintained a generally optimistic outlook for Texas in the near future, though Hamer acknowledged that the US and China’s tense trade relationship likely would not be resolved anytime soon.
”We are in the best position of any state by far to take advantage of the desire to move goods from Asia, China, back to the United States and to North America. The tensions with China are not going to subside for quite some time,” Hamer said.
“The effort to reshore as much manufacturing from Asia to the United States must be approached from the broader North American perspective,” Hamer said, adding that Texas stands to benefit most from such a move.
“We (Texas) trade $270 billion now with Mexico. The Wall Street Journal just reported over $515 billion of the $700 billion in total US-Mexico trade, that’s over 71 percent, cross through Texas,” Hamer said.
After taking questions from Sanchez for about 30 minutes, Hamer and Villarreal fielded questions from the audience. The Monitor asked about TAB’s reaction to Governor Greg Abbott’s February 2023 letter to public university and state agencies warning them that Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) hiring practices could possibly violate federal and state employment laws.
The University of Texas and Texas A&M University almost immediately responded by pausing their respective DEI admissions initiatives.
“When you look at some of the DEI initiatives, sometimes it gets far past DEI itself,” Villarreal said. “It starts adding too much to it that it loses the diversity, equity, and inclusion, and starts getting into gender this, that, or the other. I don’t think the Governor is saying you can’t have diversity and inclusion, I think (when) some of the things that get added above that, it loses whatever it gains.”
