MCALLEN, Texas - Trade processed through Texas-Mexico land ports of entry now stands at $553 billion a year, the Texas Freight Advisory Committee has been told.
Sergio Vasquez, border program manager for the international trade and border planning team at the Texas Department of Transportation, provided a lot of key statistics when giving a detailed update on the Border Transportation Master Plan.
“Texas-Mexico trade is a powerful economic driver,” Vasquez told the TxFAC. “In 2024, $840 billion of US-Mexico trade occurred between both nations, with $281 billion between Texas and Mexico. Just specific to the border region, $553 billion of trade was processed through our land ports of entry. This does not include anything outside the 60-mile study radius, which is significant.”
In addition, Vasquez said, trade with Mexico provides critical jobs nationwide.
“Over five million US jobs are tied to U.S.-Mexico trade, and over 400,000 jobs here in Texas. To put those numbers into perspective as to what our land ports of entry are dealing on a yearly basis, there was over 35 million passenger vehicles crossing just northbound within our land ports of entry: 17 million pedestrians, one million rail carts, 5 million commercial motor vehicles, and 73,000 buses.”
All the trade does not stay in the border region, Vasquez explained.
“It probably ends up somewhere outside the border region, and this is only possible thanks to our multimodal transportation system. We have six truck rail crossings, we have sea ports, we have airports, we also have corridors that go north-south movement. This connects not only the state of Texas, but connects the United States with Mexico. We also have east-west movement.”
Trade with Mexico has “increased substantially” from 1994, when NAFTA was signed, to today.
“There’s been a an increase of 767 percent of trade being processed through Texas (since the advent of NAFTA). That's grown from $67 billion in 1994 towards $589 billion in 2024. Most of that is done through commercial motor vehicles. Rail and vessel continue to play an important part. But you can see how a great majority, or almost $420 billion of it, is using commercial motor vehicles as a means of processing trade.”
Vasquez also contrasted trade in 2021 with today’s numbers.
“I use 2019 as the year because that's when this (Border Transportation Master) Plan was updated," Vasquez said. "So this is the data that we're working with. As you can see, the truck trade value has increased almost 45% from 2019. It stood at $339 billion when this plan was implemented. It now stands at $493 billion. And northbound crossing has also increased substantially, almost 20 percent.”
In a powerpoint presentation, Vasquez pointed to lots of red dots on a map of the border region. The dots represented manufacturing expansion in Mexico since 2021.
“There's been a rise in manufacturing in Mexico. The key tech manufacturer locations were being led by El Paso, Brownsville, Laredo, Del Rio and Eagle Pass in 2024. We have also looked at employment. As I mentioned earlier, Texas-Mexican trade provides substantial employment. And you'll see there on the graph, El Paso and Hidalgo County are (at the top) for the border region when it comes to employment and manufacturing.”
Vasquez added: “I just want to show this graph. Back then, in 2019, $100 billion dollars, or 5.3 of Texas GDP, was tied to Texas-Mexico border trade. I've seen some of those numbers and how that has changed. We anticipate this to change over the process of conducting a new economic analysis looking at not only the impact on Texas, but also the United States and Mexico.”
Editor's Note: The above news story is the second in a four-part series on TxDOT's Texas-Mexico Border Transportation Master Plan. Click here to read Part One.
