So the article doesn't really say anything about why Southern business interests didn't invest more to expand the services they needed to make more money off their crops, did it?
Now, there were no existing legal restrictions on their doing business directly with Europe. They were perfectly able to do what Northern businesses were doing, they just didn't do it. At least not when it came to the shipping and handling aspects. They also chose not to build many textile mills, so that domestic production was centered up north.
1. The fact that trade did not fall as much as you claim it should have after 1861 shows that while the Confederates may have THOUGHT that New York was going to be cut out of a very lucrative income stream, in fact they were not. Then again the whole Southron myth of King Cotton proved to be wishful thinking.
On the other hand, assuming your speculative alternate history was based on a CSA that was allowed to peacefully secede, you have other issues to deal with. Where did the capital come from to build new ships, railroads, warehouses, insurance firms, etc. to handle this new aspect of the market? Crops like cotton sent to New England mills now became imported materials. How quickly would the Yankees look for other suppliers from other parts of the world?
2. Wasn't it you who said that exports and imports were roughly equal? So foreign imports were ALREADY coming into the country. If more came in then yes, domestic manufacturing would have likely suffered. On the other hand import businesses would have made money. But nothing was stopping people in the South from dealing directly with Europe anyway.
3. Maybe there would have been a steady stream, and maybe there wouldn't have. Maybe American manufacturers would have devised efficiencies that would allow competition on price. Now you're the one second guessing.
4. The West and South were already generally allied as free trade advocates. I don't see how Western states and territories would somehow join with the CSA over the USA of which they'd have remained a part.
5. I think that's rank speculation.
1. The fact that trade did not fall as much as you claim it should have after 1861 shows that while the Confederates may have THOUGHT that New York was going to be cut out of a very lucrative income stream, in fact they were not. So that 230 million dollars per year of Trade produced by the South just disappeared into thin air?
You aren't getting this. I guess it's too complicated for you to understand that without the blockade, that 230 million trade with Europe would have continued and it would have steered the trade traffic to the South.
You try to use the evidence of what did happen (with a blockade) to reassure what you want to believe about what would have happened. (without the blockade.)
No war, no Blockade, The South eats New York alive. That's why the power structure of New York and Washington DC absolutely needed a war. Without a war, they were in serious economic trouble.
That 230 million dollars per year in trade didn't vanish. It was forcibly suppressed by Union Warships stopping it.