Simply a false statement.
Money earned from exports can be used to buy locally produced products. It simply can. I didn't believe anyone thought otherwise, but I am incorrect.
People who buy imports are not necessarily the same people who produce exports.
They can easily be different people.
The idea you can simplify and claim Exports pay for Imports, and the people who are exporting are paying the tarriffs on imports, is simply false.
I think you are making a "balance of payments" argument, claiming money out of a country has to eventually be equalized by the money coming into the country. In theory, over a long time, it might be correct. However, "balance of payments" inequities have existed for decades.
In practice it is much more complicated and uncertain. As I recall, you ignore the production of gold and silver in California and the West.
But gold and silver could directly pay for imports, and they were not produced in the South.
The businesses in the USA earned large amounts from service in shipping which could directly be used to pay for imports.
Here is a paper on U.S. balance of payments from 1790 to 1860.
Stop. Just stop. Money earned in Europe must be redeemed by purchasing European goods.
Whatever long winding way it takes to get back to Europe, it still begins as export value for which European money is paid.
If it is used to purchase local goods, whomever receives that European money must at some point buy goods or services from Europe to redeem the value of that money.
Like wise, the primary asserted purpose of the tariff taxation was to *FORCE* people to buy Northern produced goods so that money went into their pockets.
So even buying local goods, you are taxed by protectionist laws to the same degree as you would have been buying European goods.
You are trying to run from this, because you don't like where it leads.
The *NORTH* started the war with the South to protect their own financial interests. They did not give a sh*t about the slaves, they only cared about their own wealth and incomes, and so they launched the bloodiest war in history to protect their own wealth.
The economic evidence proves this quite well, and the only reason people buy the "War was about slavery" nonsense is because they have been taught this all their lives and they *WANT* to believe the Government is good and moral in having killed so many people to establish control over the Southern states.
We see the same phenomena of Northern Liberals proclaiming January 6ths an *INSURRECTION* and demanding all sorts of harsh penalties for everyone protesting election fraud.
No mention of election fraud or corrupt elections occur in our national propaganda system.
They don't mention it because it makes them look bad, but because they have the mass communications megaphone, they can convince everyone else that their lies are the truth.
Same thing with the civil war. The corrupt, fascist, Northeast was the winner of that war, and it had nothing at all to do with their hearts lamenting about slavery.
It was all about money, only about money, and about nothing else but money.
The South leaving was going to cost the North their control over about 750 million per year in Southern production.
They weren't going to stand for it.
“Money earned from exports can be used to buy locally produced products. It simply can.”
That is an interesting comment.
Question: When the South sent wealth - in the form of cotton - overseas, how was wealth repatriated back to the South?
Or, is it your contention the South just sent wealth overseas year after year and never expected anything in return?