What would Texas's relationship with Mexico look like?

A relationship between neighbors with deep, mutual interests in trade, a managed border, and shared water, conducted directly for the first time rather than through Washington. The ties are already enormous. Independence gives Texas its own voice in managing them.

The economic relationship is already one of the largest on earth

Texas and Mexico are not strangers who would be meeting at independence. Texas's two-way trade with Mexico runs over $300 billion a year by TNM's analysis of state trade data, a flow larger than all trade between the United States and the United Kingdom. Mexico is among Texas's most important commercial partners, and Texas is one of Mexico's. That much shared prosperity creates a powerful, built-in incentive on both sides to keep the relationship stable, friendly, and open. Two neighbors who do that much business together do not go looking for conflict.

Texas would speak for itself, directly

Today, the United States government negotiates with Mexico on the matters that touch Texas most: the border, trade, migration, and water. Texas, the state that actually shares the border and the river, is a back-seat passenger in those talks. As an independent nation, Texas would deal with Mexico directly, government to government, on the issues Texans live with every day. For the first time, the people most affected by the Texas-Mexico relationship would be the ones at the table managing it.

The border becomes a Texas decision

A core promise of independence is control of the border. As a sovereign nation, Texas would set its own border and immigration policy and manage its own ports of entry, in cooperation with Mexico on the practical mechanics the way neighboring countries everywhere do. We do not assume any particular commitment from the Mexican government here; that is theirs to make. What changes for Texas is authority: the decisions about who and what crosses, and how, would be made in Texas, by Texans, rather than set in Washington for the whole union.

Shared water, managed as the neighbors that share it

The Rio Grande is both a border and a shared resource, governed by long-standing agreement. As covered in the water answers, boundary and water treaties are exactly the kind that survive a change in sovereignty under international law, so the framework continues, with Texas stepping in as a party in its own right. That means Texas, the principal interested party on its side of the river, would represent its own water interests directly instead of relying on federal negotiators in distant Washington to defend them.

A foreign policy of friendship and honest trade

The posture an independent Texas brings to Mexico is the one it brings to the world: friendship and honest trade with all, and entangling alliances with none. A confident, prosperous Texas has every reason to want a stable, cooperative southern neighbor, and Mexico has every reason to want the same to its north. The relationship would be built on the durable foundation of mutual economic interest, managed by the two parties who actually share the border.

The bottom line

Texas and Mexico would be neighbors with massive shared interests in trade, an orderly border, and shared water, dealing with each other directly for the first time. The economic ties are already among the largest on earth, the incentives on both sides favor cooperation, and independence puts the management of the relationship where it belongs: in the hands of the people who live alongside it.