Keep Calm and Stay Long: This Gold Price Correction Is Normal and Healthy

Keep Calm and Stay Long: This Gold Price Correction Is Normal and Healthy

Gov. Greg Abbott on the size of Texas’ economy compared to Russia’s: “We’re bigger than Putin.”
Gov. Greg Abbott on the size of Texas’ economy compared to Russia’s: “We’re bigger than Putin.”
Photo of Greg Abbott by: Gage Skidmore from Peoria, AZ | Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0)Photo of Putin by: kremlin.ru | Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

In the nearly six years since Greg Abbott has been governor of Texas, the Lone Star State has been the number one destination for U.S. businesses looking to relocate.

That includes California businesses. In 2018 and 2019, as many as 660 California-based companies pulled their stakes up and moved to greener pastures in Texas, where the cost of doing business is roughly 10 percent below the national average.

Next up is Tesla. The electric vehicle (EV) company is currently in the process of building its fourth factory in the Texas capital of Austin, a growing tech hub with a young, highly educated population.

A city in Texas may also be named headquarters to TikTok, the popular video-sharing app whose fate is still in limbo after Oracle and Walmart struck a deal to jointly buy the U.S. service from TikTok’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance. This could bring as many as 25,000 high-paying jobs to the Lone Star State, according to President Donald Trump, who favors Texas as the app’s HQ.

Gov. Abbott touched on jobs, the economy and more during a Young Presidents’ Organization (YPO) event I had the pleasure of attending this week just outside San Antonio. He pointed out that the Texas GDP, at $1.9 trillion, is bigger than the economies of Canada, Brazil and Russia.

"We’re bigger than Putin,” the governor quipped, eliciting laughter.

Abbott also briefly addressed the recent protests across the nation, some of which have unfortunately turned violent. Texas would always support people’s First Amendment right to peacefully protest, he stressed, but once demonstrations resorted to rioting and looting, they were no longer protected by the Constitution.

Last week, I shared with you that the multi-city riots between May and June alone are now estimated to be the costliest civil disorders in U.S. history, costing the insurance industry between $1 billion and $2 billion in property damage.

This isn’t the first time I’ve praised our great home state, and it won’t be the last. An article I wrote four years ago on why everyone wants to move to Texas ended up being a huge viral hit on LinkedIn. Two years ago, Gov. Abbott tweeted another article I wrote, “6 Reason Why Texas Trumps All Other Economies.”