CAPITAL HIGHLIGHTS | Gary Borders
The state’s construction industry is voicing concern that Presidentelect Donald Trump’s vow to deport millions of undocumented immigrants would cause major labor shortfalls, according to the Texas Standard.
“It would devastate our industry, we wouldn’t finish our highways, we wouldn’t finish our schools,” said Stan Marek, CEO of Marek, a Houston-based commercial and residential construction giant. “Housing would disappear. I think they’d lose half their labor.”
Many of the state’s cities are on lists of the country’s fastest growing communities, and companies rely on undocumented labor. A 2022 report by the American Immigration Council and Texans for Economic Growth indicated more than a half-million immigrants were working in the construction industry and nearly 60% of that workforce was undocumented.
Economist Ray Perryman notes the Texas workforce isn’t large enough to keep pace with growth.
“There are more undocumented people working in Texas right now than there are unemployed people in Texas,” Perryman said.
Proposed tariffs raise concerns along border region
Trump’s statements to levy a 25% tariff on goods imported from Mexico and Canada is raising concerns, particularly along the southern border.
“The biggest impacts are going to be felt by manufacturing companies, transportation companies and warehousing companies,” said Tom Fullerton, an economics professor at the University of Texas at El Paso. “We could end up with a repeat of the 1930s with the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act,” which created a trade war and contributed to the Great Depression.
Most goods traded across the three countries are considered intermediary goods, The Texas Tribune reported. An example is an American carmaker importing Chinese electrical parts, sending the vehicle to Mexico for a circuit board, then the vehicle being sent back across the border for finishing in an assembly line in Texas. Fullerton said an individual product could pass between the U.S. and Mexico four to eight times.
Some Texas elected officials have expressed support for Trump’s tariffs, however. Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller said tariffs can be an effective negotiating tool to encourage Mexico to shut down the border and said any potential economic impacts would be short-lived.
“We are trying to shut down the flood of illegal immigration,” Miller said. “That factor alone offsets any temporary price increase.”
The Trump administration said the tactic is also designed to stop the flow of illegal drugs including illicit fentanyl.
Patrick calls for Alzheimer’s research funding
Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick wants lawmakers in the upcoming session next month to approve a dementia-research fund modeled after the state’s $6 billion Cancer Prevention and Research Institute, called CPRIT, The Tribune reported.
Since it began in 2007, CPRIT has become the country’s secondlargest funder of cancer research, only exceeded by the federal government. If funded by the Legislature, the dementia counterpart could have a global impact on research into Alzheimer’s and dementia.
“Like CPRIT, this investment will draw leading researchers and companies to Texas and require them to be based in Texas, leading to their further investment in our state,” Patrick said last week.
The Texas Department of State Health Services reports that 459,000 Texans have been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, the most common form of dementia. That is about 12% of the state’s over-65 population.
Gary Borders is a veteran award-winning Texas journalist. He published a number of community newspapers in Texas during a 30-year span, including in Longview, Fort Stockton, Nacogdoches, Lufkin and Cedar Park. Email: [email protected]
