They're going to "eat our lunch," President Biden? As has been said countless times, goods coming into Southern ports from Europe and shipped north would either have to pay both Confederate and US tariffs or be broken down into smaller quantities for the risky business of smuggling. Shippers would also have to pay more in wages or fuel to make the longer trip to New Orleans. The Southern rail system was also far less extensive than the Northern. I believe the Maritime Charleston website quoted words to the effect that New York's economic hinterland stretched to Kentucky and beyond, while Charleston's barely reached East Tennessee, if that. Add to that difficulties with slave unrest, climate and disease and it doesn't look like the lunch was going to be eaten anytime soon.
There are newspaper editorials of the day which point out that it would have been impossible to regulate the border between the CSA and the USA. The goods would have gotten through anyway, and the Mississippi would have carried them deep into the heart of the country. New York and New England would have been twice hit. First in the loss of their shipping, handling, and banking industries because they would be bypassed, and secondly in the loss of manufacturing business because their products would have been replaced with cheaper and better quality European goods.
It was a double whammy, and do not think the industrialists of that era were stupid. They knew exactly what sort of threat an independent south would pose to their economic interests.
I believe the Maritime Charleston website quoted words to the effect that New York's economic hinterland stretched to Kentucky and beyond, while Charleston's barely reached East Tennessee, if that.
Most traffic shipped out of New Orleans. Charleston was a more local market, but still one that would displace northern products and services.
New Orleans is where the real trouble was.
In a DiogenesLamp hypothetical alternate history, where Jefferson Davis refuses to start Civil War at Fort Sumter, and peace is maintained between USA & CSA -- in that alternate history, the Union "moneyed power structure" is harmed much less than the actual historical results.
In actual history all commerce between USA and CSA stopped in early 1861 and did not fully resume until early 1865 -- 4 years.
The immediate result was to re-route Midwestern products from export South via the Mississippi River through New Orleans to more expensive train transport, East to large Eastern cities -- Baltimore, Philadelphia & New York.
Another result was near collapse of the Union's largest industry -- cotton textile manufacturing.
Yes, Southern cotton was partially replaced by Northern manufacturers with US wool and some foreign sources of cotton, but cotton textiles did not recover until the war ended.
Other Northern industries that suffered throughout the war were shoes and cast-iron products, though these were eventually repurposed to make war-materials for the Union army.
So the immediate result, in 1861, of Civil War was to reduce the Union economy (GDP) by roughly 15%.
But then the Union's economy began to grow again and by 1864 the North alone had double the GDP of the entire nation in 1860.
Federal revenues doubled by 1863 and doubled again by 1865.
Bottom line: the Union's largest industry (textiles) was severely damaged by Civil War and that fact suggests DiogenesLamp's "Northeastern moneyed power structure" would not have been so eager for war as DiogenesLamp claims.