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:
“I sincerely hope that the incoming Congress will be alive, as it should be, to the importance of our foreign trade and of encouraging it in every way feasible. The possibility of increasing this trade in the Orient, in the Philippines, and in South America is known to everyone who has given the matter attention.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)
“...to many a mother’s heart has come the disappointment of a loss of power, a limitation of influence when early manhood takes the boy from the home, or when even before that time, in school, or where he touches the great world and begins to be bewildered with its controversies, trade and economics and politics make their imprint even while his lips are dewy with his mother’s kiss.”
—J. Ellen Foster (1840–1910)
“Until the end of the Middle Ages, and in many cases afterwards too, in order to obtain initiation in a trade of any sort whatever—whether that of courtier, soldier, administrator, merchant or workman—a boy did not amass the knowledge necessary to ply that trade before entering it, but threw himself into it; he then acquired the necessary knowledge.”
—Philippe Ariés (20th century)