Texas judge invites Elon Musk to bring Tesla to Hidalgo County
Hidalgo County Judge Richard Cortez pens a letter to the disgruntled Tesla chief inviting the company to move from California to Texas.
A Hidalgo County judge who wrote a letter urging Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk to move his operations to South Texas said Wednesday that he was "impressed" when the billionaire quickly replied to his letter on Twitter.
Appearing on "Fox & Friends" with host Ainsley Earhardt, Judge Richard Cortez stated that his county would love to have Musk and his company in their community.
TESLA'S CALIFORNIA FACTORY 'UP AND RUNNING' DESPITE LOCAL RESTRICTIONS
"It would be wonderful for us," he said.
Musk already has some SpaceX locations in Texas but tweeted Saturday that he would relocate his Tesla Motors facilities from California to Texas or Nevada to restart production quicker during the coronavirus pandemic.
Tesla filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California last weekend, alleging that Alameda County had violated the due process and equal protection clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment and sought an injunction to allow its plant in Fremont, Calif., to begin production immediately.
"Well, you know, golly I don't want to talk about what California doesn't do. I want to talk about what Texas can do," Cortez told Earhardt.
"Of course, you’ve already mentioned that we have no income tax. For the 15th consecutive year, Texas has been voted as the best state to do business in the United States," he remarked.
This photo shows the Tesla plant Tuesday, May 12, 2020, in Fremont, Calif. Tesla CEO Elon Musk has emerged as a champion of defying stay-home orders intended to stop the coronavirus from spreading. He reopened Tesla's San Francisco Bay Area factory on Monday and President Donald Trump is supporting that decision. (AP Photo/Ben Margot)
Cortez also listed a warm climate, a young workforce, great universities and schools, a low crime rate, and an already-present community of manufacturing facilities called maquiladoras that cater to the automobile industry as some of his home's greatest assets.
Lastly, he praised Hidalgo's percentage on the consumer price index.
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"If you look at one to 100, then we are [at] 85. So, anything you buy here is percent...cheaper than the average price in the United States," Cortez noted.
"We all need to be competitive in a world and a world economy. So, if you are looking for a place that is very suited for automakers: here it is," he asserted.