Trade
Much of Houston's success as a petrochemical complex is due to its busy man-made ship channel, the Port of Houston. The port ranks first in the country in international commerce and is the sixth-largest port in the world. Amid other U.S. ports, it is the busiest in foreign tonnage and second in overall tonnage. Because of these economic trades, many residents have moved to Houston from other U.S. states, as well as hundreds of countries worldwide.
The coffee companies of Houston formed the Greater Houston Coffee Association in fall 2000. The industry then tried to make Houston a major coffee shipping port. Coffee sold through futures contracts may only be shipped to a New York Board of Trade-certified port, and Texas's ad valorem tax on warehouse inventories made it impossible for Houston to get such a certification. The tax was written into the Constitution of Texas, so the Greater Houston Coffee Association asked State Representative Joe E. Moreno and State Senator Mario Gallegos to present a constitutional amendment bill to exempt cocoa and coffee stored in Harris County warehouses from the tax. Voters approved the amendment in 2001. Since then Houston's role as a coffee port increased. After Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, much of the traffic switched to Houston.
Demand on Texas oil increased, and many people from the northeast moved to Houston to profit from the trade. Pasadena has refineries, and the Port of Houston is among the busiest in the world. Since the 1980s oil bust, the Houston area aimed to diversify its industries.
Read more about this topic: Economy Of Houston
Famous quotes containing the word trade:
“Literature flourishes best when it is half a trade and half an art.”
—W.R. (William Ralph)
“It passes, and we stay:
A quality of loss
Affecting our content,
As trade had suddenly encroached
Upon a sacrament.”
—Emily Dickinson (1830–1886)
“The girl must early be impressed with the idea that she is to be “a hand, not a mouth”; a worker, and not a drone, in the great hive of human activity. Like the boy, she must be taught to look forward to a life of self-dependence, and early prepare herself for some trade or profession.”
—Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902)