Musk Vows More Business Moves to Texas After Newsom Bill-Signing DAVID BLACKMON
“This is the final straw,” Musk writes, “Because of this law and many others that preceded it, SpaceX will now move its HQ from Hawthorne, California to Starbase, Texas,”
Musk Vows More Business Moves to Texas After Newsom Bill-Signing
JUL 17
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PAID
A few years ago, Elon Musk, founder, CEO and/or buyer of companies like Tesla, SpaceX, StarLink, and X (formerly Twitter), warned California Governor Gavin Newsom that his government’s growing array of anti-business, anti-family laws and regulations could ultimately leave him little choice but to abandon the state, as so many thousands of Californians have done in recent years. On Tuesday, Musk announced on his X platform that will be doing just that after Newsom signed a new law banning the state’s public schools from notifying parents when their children display trans-like behavior.
“This is the final straw,” Musk writes, “Because of this law and many others that preceded it, SpaceX will now move its HQ from Hawthorne, California to Starbase, Texas,” adding later that he has “had enough of dodging violent drug addicts just to get in and out of the building.”
Shortly thereafter, Musk also said he will be moving the headquarters for X, currently located in Market Square in downtown San Francisco, to Austin, the capital city of Texas. The choice of Austin is hardly surprising given that Musk, after a previous dustup with Newsom over California’s punitive tax laws, moved Tesla’s headquarters to that city, where he was already in the process of building one of the electric car company’s enormous manufacturing facilities.
“I did make it clear to Governor Newsom about a year ago that laws of this nature would force families and companies to leave California to protect their children,” Musk said in a separate tweet later in the day.
Governor Newsom appeared almost celebratory about Musk’s statement, writing on his own X account that, “The last time Elon Musk ‘moved’ an HQ, Tesla ended up expanding in California—even relocating their Global Engineering & AI headquarters to California because of our diverse, world-leading talent.”
While Newsom likely regards my home state of Texas as some sort of redneck-filled backwater, Musk has discovered otherwise since relocating Tesla to Austin, and building his SpaceX launching facility at Boca Chica, on the Gulf Coast outside of the booming city of Brownsville. Texas is in fact one of the most diverse states in the nation, one that sports an array of highly regarded higher education institutions.
As Musk knew when he relocated Tesla to Austin, one of those institutions, The University of Texas, churns out thousands of graduates with world-leading talent who come from all over the planet every year.
This rivalry between California and Texas did not begin with the war between Musk and Newsom. They have long been states with competing visions of how best to achieve economic and societal success. The two states have also long been governed by competing political parties.
California, where the Democratic party has dominated the state government for the last three decades, has pursued a regime of high taxes and onerous regulations, in the process marginalizing what had once been a powerful oil and gas industry. By contrast, the Republican Party has won every statewide election in Texas since 1994, in the process creating a lower-tax, business-friendly regulatory system that has allowed the state to become one of the handful of most prolific oil and gas producing regions on earth and an economic powerhouse.
Indeed, if Texas were a separate nation, it would rank 3rd globally in natural gas production, and 5th in the production of oil. But the state’s economy has become so huge that even such a robust oil and gas industry represents only around 15% of the overall gross domestic product.
Now, Mr. Musk promises to boost the Texas economy again with the relocations of two of his companies’ headquarters and thousands of employees to the state from California. While Musk’s proposed move is notable due to his status as possibly the world’s wealthiest man and the robust profiles of his companies, he is far from unique. In 2022 – the most current year available – the US Census Bureau estimates that almost 300 Californians relocated to Texas every day.
Responding to Musk’s announcements on his own X account, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said, “This cements Texas as the leader in space exploration.” Indeed, Musk is also not the only notable billionaire to locate much of his space exploration operation in the Lone Star State. Texas is also home to the launch facility of Blue Origin, founded and owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.
While Bezos maintains Blue Origin’s headquarters in Kent, Washington, there is no doubt Gov. Abbott would welcome him and Blue Origin’s headquarters to the Lone Star State should he ever want his company to fully enjoy operating in a low-tax state where businesses of all kinds are welcomed and truly appreciated.