Samsung Electronics America is packing up approximately 1,000 jobs and fleeing New Jersey for Plano, Texas, because apparently even a mega-corporation can only tolerate the highest corporate tax rate in the nation for so long. The company is abandoning a brand-new corporate headquarters in Ridgefield Park, New Jersey — a facility that opened less than a year ago — to relocate to a state that charges zero percent income tax.
Let that sink in. They built a whole new headquarters and still said, "Nah, we're out." That's how bad it is.
New Jersey Assemblyman Paul Kanitra summed it up perfectly: "Could you imagine how bad it must've been for Samsung to build out a new corporate headquarters for North America and abandon it less than a year later? Great job NJ Democrats!!!"
Great job indeed. Democrats tax-and-spend policies have turned New Jersey into a place where businesses build headquarters just to have something nice to leave behind. Samsung has had a 30-year presence in Texas already, so this isn't exactly a leap of faith — it's a company sprinting toward a state that actually wants it there.
Samsung, for its part, released the kind of corporate-speak statement you'd expect: "Samsung Electronics America Inc. is undergoing a business transformation designed to better position our organization for long-term growth and future success." Translation: we're going where the government doesn't mug us at the statehouse door.
New Jersey Assemblyman John Azzariti didn't mince words about what's happening. "They won because they have spent years creating an environment where businesses want to invest, grow and create jobs," he said of Texas. "Meanwhile, New Jersey continues to raise costs, add regulations and send the message that employers are little more than a revenue source for government."
Read that last part again. "Little more than a revenue source for government." That's not a business climate. That's a shakedown.
The numbers tell the whole ugly story. Michele Siekerka, CEO of the New Jersey Business and Industry Association, laid out the damage: "With New Jersey maintaining the highest corporate tax rate in the nation, by far... we have seen our Fortune 500 companies go from 22 in 2018 to 15 in 2025." Seven Fortune 500 companies gone in seven years. That's one per year, like clockwork, heading for the exits.
And it's not just a New Jersey problem. More than 300 companies have relocated to Texas since 2015, as reported by LifeZette. The list reads like a corporate hall of fame — ExxonMobil, Tesla, Oracle, Hewlett Packard Enterprise. Governor Greg Abbott has basically turned Texas into the NFL free agency of corporate America, and every blue state governor is watching his roster get raided.
Blue states keep raising taxes and then act genuinely stunned when the tax base walks out the door. It's like jacking up the rent every month and then calling an emergency meeting when the building goes empty. The math isn't complicated. Zero percent beats the highest rate in the nation every single time.
The free market votes with its feet. And right now, those feet are wearing cowboy boots.
