Seen from a helicopter above Dallas-Fort Worth, the corporate campuses and factories of companies that have decamped from California and the US north-east stretch to the horizon. This is the landscape of today’s Texas — a Republican state that has gone out of its way to be as business friendly as possible and now boasts more Fortune 500 companies than its Democrat-controlled rivals, with 57 to California’s 56.

“Any time you raise a tax or hurt the job creators or put in more regulation, Texas becomes even more attractive,” says Ross Perot Jr, chair of the property developer Hillwood, as well as the US Chamber of Commerce and the Perot Group family office. More than 100 companies have relocated their headquarters to the state since 2020, including Charles Schwab, Tesla and Hewlett Packard Enterprise. Some have also made Texas their corporate domicile as the state overhauls its business code to give more power to management at the expense of shareholders.

“The best example we have recently is Elon Musk,” says Perot. “Why did Elon leave California right in the middle of Covid? They’re shutting down his factories and he came to Texas and we’re wide open.” Not content with moving Tesla to Austin in 2021, Musk incorporated Space X in Texas after a Delaware trial court ruled against his $56bn pay package in 2024.

JPMorgan now has more employees in the state than it does in New York. While proponents see the state as a model for the US as a whole, critics warn its approach is being tested by midterm elections and growing backlash against data centres. The state introduced a Texas Business Court in 2023 and a sweeping capital markets package last year, a system described by law professor Christina Sautter as “capitalism on steroids” and “much more pro-management and anti-shareholder.”