A new economic iron curtain is falling across America as the “Boom Belt” — an 11-state powerhouse in the U.S. Southeast — shatters records and challenges the traditional financial dominance of New York and Chicago.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott joined forces in Miami on Tuesday to celebrate a $9 trillion gross domestic product (GDP) region that is now outpacing every other quadrant of the country in population, jobs and capital investment.

“I often tell people, as Governor of Florida, my job is to closely follow California, Illinois, New York, so I can do precisely the opposite of what they do,” DeSantis said during the panel held at the Pérez Art Museum. “Florida’s had more adjusted gross income move into our state since I’ve been governor than has ever moved into any state in the history of the United States.”

“Visionary business leaders seek to where not the puck is right now, but to where it is going… while other regions where the puck has been in the past, they’re now burdened by high taxes, by restrictive regulations, by policies that are actually hostile to businesses,” Abbott added.

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The governors spotlighted how Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas now generate $9 trillion in annual GDP, trailing only the U.S. and China globally, while absorbing 70% of all U.S. population growth in the last five years.

Greg Abbott, governor of Texas, from left, Paul Atkins, chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Jim Lee, founder and chief executive officer of the Texas Stock Exchange, Jim Esposito, president of Citadel Securities, and Ron De (Getty Images)

The migration has been fueled by more than just sunshine; it is a tactical retreat from a wave of tax-the-rich proposals sweeping through blue-state legislatures including California, New York and now Washington.

“We’re in the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States. The founding fathers, they wanted a system based on the consent of the government… They wanted to have a rule of law and they wanted some of this stuff, particularly private property, to not just be subjected to those types of whims,” DeSantis said.

“Hence, in Texas, even though we have never had a state income tax, we wanted to make sure that future generations would not be able to impose an income tax, so we made income taxes unconstitutional in the state of Texas,” Abbott said. “We made a wealth tax unconstitutional. We made a death tax unconstitutional, and as [Citadel’s] Jim Lee pointed out, we made a transactions tax unconstitutional.”

“I know that there’s been a lot of very healthy competition between states like Florida, Tennessee, Texas, Georgia, some of these. And I think that’s really, really good,” DeSantis noted. “When Greg’s doing stuff, people say, ‘Look [at] what Texas just did.’”

SEC Chairman Paul Atkins and TXSE CEO Jim Lee warned that the U.S. has lost half of its public companies over the last 30 years because the federal government made it “complicated, expensive and legally treacherous” to go public.

“When capital, companies and people all move in the same direction, with that kind of consistency and at that kind scale, it behooves us to ask why. I believe that the answer, more often than not, is the region’s steady adherence to first principles, including those that rigorously protect investors without needlessly paralyzing companies,” Atkins said. “So for our part, the SEC is returning to those same principles by renewing the conditions that make our public markets the natural destination for companies to raise capital and for investors to share in their success.”

“As Chairman Atkins has remarked repeatedly, it used to be cool to be public, so what happened? The answer is we made it complicated, expensive and legally treacherous to be a public company. Remaining private became the only rational choice. This is not a coincidence. It is a consequence,” Lee emphasized.

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As someone who helped lead the firm’s move from Chicago to Miami, Citadel Securities President Jim Esposito highlighted the practical, bottom-line reasons why the “Boom Belt” is winning the war for capital — framing the Southern governing style as an inspiration for the rest of America.

“Across Florida, Texas and other high-growth states, government officials have created environments where businesses can operate, invest. And importantly, grow with confidence,” he said. “This type of public and private partnership should be the model for the rest of our country.”

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Britain’s standing as a global climate leader faces a critical test as senior figures in international diplomacy have warned that any move to open new oil and gas fields in the North Sea would deal a severe blow to worldwide efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

The government is facing mounting pressure from the oil industry, the Conservative opposition, Reform UK, certain trade unions and factions within the Treasury to grant new drilling licences. This comes despite research showing that the two largest remaining fields, Rosebank and Jackdaw, would displace just 1% and 2% respectively of the UK’s gas imports, offering negligible benefit to either prices or energy security.

The North Sea basin is now more than 90% depleted, and extracting its remaining pockets of hydrocarbons is becoming progressively more costly and energy-intensive. Yet the political appetite for new licensing persists, placing Ed Miliband, the energy security and net zero secretary, in an increasingly uncomfortable position.

Nicolas Stern, professor at the London School of Economics, cautioned that fresh drilling would be damaging on multiple fronts, bad for growth, bad for energy security and a harmful signal to the international community. Lord Stern pointed to Britain’s track record as the first G7 nation to commit to net zero by 2050 and its influential climate legislation, arguing that the world pays close attention when the UK changes course.

The backlash from the developing world has been particularly fierce. A senior African negotiator, speaking anonymously, said the continent would reject any UK expansion of oil drilling, describing it as fundamentally at odds with the Paris agreement. Mohamed Adow, director of the Nairobi-based Power Shift Africa thinktank, warned that approval of new projects would signal that short-term interests were being placed above long-term responsibility, setting a precedent that could prove impossible to contain.

The timing is especially sensitive. Britain has been one of the principal supporters of a global conference on fossil fuel transition taking place in Colombia later this month. However, Miliband will not attend, with climate envoy Rachel Kyte going in his place, a decision likely to disappoint campaigners who credited the energy secretary with brokering a last-minute deal at the Cop30 summit in Brazil last November.

Christiana Figueres, former executive secretary of the UN framework convention on climate change, acknowledged the geopolitical pressures driving the energy security debate but argued that expanding drilling risked locking in infrastructure that was increasingly out of step with the direction of the global energy system. True energy independence, she suggested, lay in scaling up clean domestic energy rather than prolonging the life of declining industries.

The strategic concern for Britain’s business community is clear. Many developing nations are weighing whether to exploit their own fossil fuel reserves rather than invest in renewables. If they choose the former path, the world would far exceed the carbon limits scientists say are necessary to avert the worst consequences of climate breakdown. A senior development official put the matter bluntly: developing countries are already asking why they should forgo their own resources if the UK will not do the same.

An ally of Miliband defended the government’s position, describing the decision to halt new exploration licences as a landmark stance for a major oil and gas producing nation. A government spokesperson confirmed that clean energy and climate action remained at the heart of the agenda, including what it called a world-leading commitment to stop issuing licences for new fields.

Whether that commitment holds in the face of political and industrial pressure will be one of the defining questions of Britain’s energy policy in the months ahead.

Jamie Young

Jamie is Senior Reporter at Business Matters, bringing over a decade of experience in UK SME business reporting.
Jamie holds a degree in Business Administration and regularly participates in industry conferences and workshops.

When not reporting on the latest business developments, Jamie is passionate about mentoring up-and-coming journalists and entrepreneurs to inspire the next generation of business leaders.