Would Texas need its own trade negotiators?

Yes, and that is a gain, not a burden. Right now Washington negotiates trade for Texas, even though Texas is the number-one trading state in the country. Building a Texas trade office means Texas finally negotiates its own deals around its own industries, and it is a small, ordinary function every trading nation runs.

Today Texas does the trade and someone else cuts the deal

Here is the part most people never think about. Texas is the largest exporting state in the United States, by a wide margin, yet under Article 1, Section 10 of the Constitution it is forbidden from making its own trade agreements. So the deals that govern Texas trade are negotiated in Washington, by people weighing the interests of all fifty states, many of whom do not share Texas priorities on energy, agriculture, or manufacturing. Texas carries the trade and lives with terms set by others. Needing its own negotiators is just the flip side of finally getting to set its own terms.

It is a standard, modest function of a normal country

Trade representation is not exotic or expensive. Every trading nation has a trade office, from giants to small countries, and they are lean operations relative to the economies they serve. An independent Texas would stand one up as part of expanding the office of the Secretary of State into a foreign and commercial ministry, one of the genuinely new sovereign functions the report already accounts for. The whole basket of new functions Washington runs from outside the state, a foreign ministry included, costs on the order of $5 to $15 billion a year combined, a low single-digit share of Texas revenue, and a trade office is a small slice of that.

Texas already has the raw material for it

This is not a skill Texas would import from nothing. Texas already runs the busiest trade gateway in North America, deep ports, a major customs presence on its soil, and an economy that does business with over 200 countries. The expertise in moving goods across borders is everywhere in the Texas economy. Standing up a negotiating team draws on a state that already lives and breathes international trade, rather than starting cold.

Negotiating for Texas alone is an advantage, not a disadvantage

A Texas trade office answers to one set of interests: Texas. That is a sharper instrument than a federal negotiator splitting the difference across fifty states. It can pursue deals built around Texas energy exports, Texas agriculture, and Texas manufacturing, and it can move faster, because it does not have to reconcile the competing demands of a continental union. Smaller trading nations routinely punch above their weight precisely because their trade teams are focused.

The bottom line

Texas would run its own trade negotiators, which is exactly the point: the number-one trading state in the country would finally negotiate its own deals instead of accepting terms set in Washington. It is a standard, low-cost function, built on an economy that already trades with the world.