You said: “So you’re saying it was cheaper to bring the goods to New York, unload them, pay the tariffs, load them again, and ship them to their customers in the south? All so they could rapidly load goods for export and high-tail it back to Europe? What export goods might those be?”
It was more profitable for the shipping companies. Hell, they didn’t care where the cargo ended up, or how it eventually ended up there. They were concerned with delivering the cargo ASAP, loading up on goods for the return voyage, and setting sail. For example, a prime commodity that England desired was lumber, and America was its biggest supplier of lumber.
An even larger export was cotton, and by your logic all that cotton should have been exported from New York or Boston because that's where all your ships were turning around and heading back to Europe. But in fact only a fraction of the cotton was exported from New York and Boston, the overwhelming majority was exported from Southern ports. So if all those goods were destined for Southern consumers anyway, as you claim, then why didn't they take them direct to the buyers? Why did they stop and drop them off in New York before heading down to load with cotton?
The fact is that the goods landed in Northern ports because that's where the consumers were. They did not land in Southern ports because the demand for the goods wasn't there.