COLLEGE STATION, Texas (KBTX) – Texas’ brand-new Secretary of State made his first major appearance in the Brazos Valley Tuesday night, telling a crowd at Texas A&M’s Bush School that fixing everyday bottlenecks at the Texas-Mexico border is a top priority as he settles into the job.
Robert S. Howden, appointed by Gov. Greg Abbott in July, spoke at the Mosbacher Institute’s “Conversations in Public Policy” event, capping off a full day of panels on Texas-Mexico trade, energy, agriculture and security. Howden now serves as the state’s 116th Secretary of State, a role that includes acting as the governor’s senior advisor on border and Mexican affairs, in addition to overseeing Texas elections.
“I’m still brand new to this job,” Howden told the audience. “I’ve been on the job about two months. So, I just started it.”
Despite being new to the role, Howden said he’s already zeroing in on practical, on-the-ground problems, including a Border Patrol checkpoint north of Laredo that funnels traffic down to just two lanes, slowing commercial trucking traffic.
“There’s issues like that that come up in my job that I’m going to take a good, hard look at,” Howden said. “But it’s keeping up with the demand.”
He described a recent visit to Laredo, where he said growth is outpacing infrastructure.
“Laredo is a fantastic place,” Howden said. “They’re trying to keep up with the pace… trade’s important in Texas. Trade’s important with Mexico.”
Howden told the crowd that Mexico has been Texas’ largest trading partner for nearly two decades, and that the two sides did more than $300 billion in trade last year alone. He said Texas sells more goods to Mexico than any other U.S. state sells to any single country in the world.
That trade moves through 34 ports of entry along the state’s 1,240-mile border with Mexico, according to Howden, who said a significant share of all U.S.-Mexico trade passes through Texas.
Howden said the state is also focused on workforce needs tied to that growth, including expanding trade schools for jobs like electricians and welders, fields he said are in high demand as data centers and manufacturing projects expand across the state.
Howden isn’t new to Texas politics. Before his appointment, he served as a senior advisor to Abbott and as the governor’s director of legislative affairs. He has worked for four Texas governors over his career, including a role helping build the state’s economic development incentive programs under former Gov. Rick Perry.
But the Secretary of State role, and its focus on the Texas-Mexico relationship, is new territory in some respects, Howden acknowledged. Asked how the state plans to attract more investment from Mexico specifically, Howden said he didn’t have a full answer yet.
“That is a new one for me,” he said. “So, I’ll have to figure that out.”
Tuesday’s forum also featured panels on agricultural trade, energy and infrastructure, and industrial competitiveness with business and policy leaders from both sides of the border.
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