Texas Comptroller continues Good for Texas Tour: Supply Chains Edition

ARLINGTON — Texas Comptroller Glenn Hegar is highlighting the impact of supply chains on the Texas economy as he restarts his Good for Texas Tour. This week, Hegar is touting the automotive and semiconductor supply chain industries with visits to General Motors (GM) and Texas Instruments (TI).

“Global supply chains — the networks between a company and its suppliers that produce and distribute products to the final consumers — have been designed to lower both consumer and production costs,” Hegar said. “There are risks and vulnerabilities in the supply chain systems that have been designed over the last several decades, which were highlighted by COVID-19 economic disruptions.

“Smart businesses like GM and TI are constantly working to evaluate and enhance their global supply networks. Government has proposed infrastructure funding for critical industries like semiconductors and rare earth processing, citing their importance to national security and national competitiveness. As the nation’s top state for international trade and the 9th largest economy in the world, limiting supply chain disruptions is critical to the Texas economy.”

During his Good for Texas Tour: Supply Chains Edition, Hegar is sharing the results of a new Comptroller’s office study detailing the vital role supply chains play in enhancing production efficiencies and reducing costs for producers and consumers.

The study also examines the risks to supply chains and how businesses and the federal government are responding to those risks.

At GM, which Hegar visited today, about 1,300 vehicles are built each day at its Arlington Assembly plant, which is home to every new full-size SUV in GM’s product lineup sold around the world: the Chevrolet Suburban and Tahoe, GMC Yukon, and Yukon XL, and the Cadillac Escalade. Overall, Texas is home to 13 GM facilities, employing more than 13,500 Texans who earn more than $1.3 billion in wages.

In 2020, Texas imported $38.3 billion worth of automobile manufacturing products and exported $11.7 billion. Motor vehicle parts represent the bulk — $8.3 billion or 71 percent — of the state’s automobile-related exports in 2020. That compares with a 40 percent share nationwide, reflecting the importance of those products to Texas.

TI, which Hegar visited Monday on its Dallas campus, is a global semiconductor company that designs, manufactures, tests, and sells analog and embedded processing chips that go into a variety of end markets. The company has about 30,000 employees worldwide.

Since its early days, TI has invested in growing the state’s workforce to meet industry demands. And TI is in the process of expanding its Texas presence by building a new 300-mm wafer fabrication facility in Richardson as part of the company’s long-term capacity planning. Construction is well underway, and the facility should be ready to support production in the second half of 2022.

In 2020, TI was part of an industry in Texas that produced more than one-quarter of the country’s semiconductor exports, which were valued at $63 billion. Texas’ semiconductor industry contributed $15.3 billion to the state’s gross domestic product (GDP) in 2020, 15 percent of the industry’s total United States’ GDP.