CBRE’s 2026 update, which covers companies of all sizes, found that Dallas-Fort Worth has attracted more than 100 headquarters relocations since 2018, more than any other city in the country. Eleven more headquarters moved to DFW from other states or countries in 2025 alone, many from Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, and Chicago. CBRE says California’s largest cities continue to suffer net losses.

Taxes are an obvious reason. Texas and Florida impose no individual income tax, a major consideration when a company is deciding where executives and highly paid employees will live. But CBRE also identifies “business climate” as important, as are energy and construction costs.

California’s environmental obsessions make energy more expensive than it needs to be. The state’s renewable-energy mandates require utilities to buy increasing amounts of power from favored sources while also financing costly new transmission, storage, and reliability investments needed to support the transition. The result is expensive electricity. According to the Energy Information Administration, California’s average retail electricity price in 2024 was 27.04 cents per kilowatt-hour, nearly three times the 9.79 cents paid in Texas.

California’s climate policies also drive up fuel costs. Its cap-and-invest program and low-carbon fuel standard add to the price of gasoline, while Sacramento has imposed an increasingly hostile regulatory regime on oil refiners as the state pursues a dramatic reduction in petroleum use. Refiners have responded by closing facilities or converting them to other uses, shrinking California’s refining capacity and leaving motorists more vulnerable to price spikes when remaining facilities go offline.

California has made building almost anything needlessly difficult. A 2025 RAND study found that market-rate multifamily housing in California costs 2.3 times as much per square foot to build as it does in Texas and takes more than 22 months longer to complete. Municipal development fees averaged less than $1,000 per unit in Texas but $29,000 in California. Permitting delays, fees, design mandates, and union wages all contribute to those costs. Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) and state legislators tacitly admitted the problem last year when they curtailed environmental review under the California Environmental Quality Act for urban housing.

Government unions force taxpayers to pay more for government while getting less in return. Collective bargaining can raise government-worker wages and benefits by 25%, while rigid union contracts make it harder to fire poor performers, control costs, and respond to fiscal emergencies. Unionized governments are consequently more likely to borrow during downturns and pay higher interest rates, while union work rules have been linked to higher operating costs and worse public services.

RICHMOND MEMO SHOWS WHY WEAPONIZATION INVESTIGATION WAS NECESSARY

No single tax, regulation, or union contract causes a corporation to move hundreds or thousands of miles. CBRE notes that mergers, real estate needs, access to customers, and labor availability matter too. But when headquarters repeatedly leaves the same high-cost states and relocates to the same lower-cost states, policymakers should recognize that it is an explainable pattern, not a coincidence.

Texas did not surpass California in Fortune 500 headquarters by accident, but by policy design. Companies are voting with their feet. Blue-state leaders can complain about the verdict, or they can start competing again.