I doubt that's true. Why did Jefferson write into the Declaration of Independence:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:They were very aware of regional growth of fruits and vegetables, wheat and corn, cotton and barley, fish, trees, coal and sulfur, granite and limestone, etc.
They didn't expect the regions to horde what they had; they expected them to trade what they had to obtain what they did not have.
-PJ
Imported products tended to be luxury goods, and weren’t usually articles of everyday use.
Wheat, cotton, barley, coal, and even imported goods like coffee and tea, were simple goods, not complicated products like cars, or televisions or pharmaceuticals. Regulation wasn’t really required.
Plus, in Jefferson’s day, you’d use the wood outside your house for heating, not coal. You’d use local stone and wood, not marble. If wheat wouldn’t grow, you’d eat corn or buckwheat or rye. You might eat meat that you hadn’t killed, but it didnt come from two thousand miles away. In spite of national and international trade, it was a simpler world.
Certainly there were industries, but their impact on your life wouldn’t have been what it is today.