It stands to reason that goods would be shipped to those consuming them. For example, if 80% of the imports are destined for southern consumers the it makes more sense to send those goods directly to southern ports like Charleston and Mobile and New Orleans. Ports closest to the consumers and which would ensure the consumers would receive their goods without any unnecessary additional costs. Yet you would have us believe that the ports where only 20% of the consumers were received 95% of the imports, only to turn around and send them hundreds of miles away to those actually consuming them. By your way of thinking that makes perfect sense apparently. But to me it seems an unnecessary additional cost.
Yet every single example I can think of, then and now, indicates that your reasoning is flawed, as reality shows otherwise.
I've seen this numbers game played too many times. Here are the facts of the tarrif argument:
1. The Southern economy was heavily dependent on international trade.
2. Protectionist tarrifs stifle international trade.
To prove your point, you need to refute one of the above facts. Whether a tarrif is paid in New York or New Orleans is immaterial. The percentages of goods shipped to Pennsylvania vs Tennesee is irrelevent to the core of the argument.
As has been asked of you many times, on that point may we safely conclude that Bentonville, Arkansas consumes more Wal-Mart goods than any other town in the nation?
Bentonville is Wal-Mart's largest distributorship meaning Wal-Mart goods ship through Bentonville than any other place in America. Yet one could drive for 100 miles or more in practically any direction from Bentonville and see nothing but chicken, corn, and cattle because it is in the middle of nowhere. Your logic, if true, would have us believe that so many of Wal-Mart's goods go to Bentonville because Bentonville is where the consumers are. And don't give me your usual crap about regional distribution centers. For over a decade Bentonville was the only Wal-Mart distributorship in the nation and it still serves as the distributorship for significantly more populated cities throughout the south central united states.
For example, if 80% of the imports are destined for southern consumers the it makes more sense to send those goods directly to southern ports like Charleston and Mobile and New Orleans.
Not necessarily. Warehousing in NYC could, for example, be cheaper and more widely available than in New Orleans. Similarly, NYC may be better geographically suited as an import hub than New Orleans, which requires navigation into the Gulf of Mexico instead of being directly accessible from the Atlantic coast. Or it could simply be the case that inland railroads and waterways are cheaper means of mass transportation than seabound vessles. In 1860 there was not a single major southern city to the east of the Mississippi that was not accessible by rail from virtually any point on the east coast, making inland shipping an easy task.
As a further deviation from your little "rule," one may conclude that it is sensible to ship over land to regions that are not accessible or at least not easily accessible by sea. How do you suppose people in Indiana and Tennessee got their goods, non-seq? Since neither has an ocean port it would be impossible other than an inland road, railroad, or waterway.
Ports closest to the consumers and which would ensure the consumers would receive their goods without any unnecessary additional costs.
Not necessarily. It is almost always cheaper today to buy an airline ticket that stops over in a hub city than a direct flight, even if the hub is hundreds of miles out of the way. The same has always been true of shipping - it is normally cheaper to ship indirectly through one common location then distribute outward from it than to go from each individual point on one end to each individual point on the other end. If your rule were true, which it is not, it would have been cheaper prior to the Panama Canal to sail a ship from Europe around cape horn to San Francisco since that was technically the "direct" route of doing things. Instead they either went to Panama and shipped inland across the isthmus to another ship on the Pacific side or, after 1869, stuck it on a train in the east shipped it inland across the continent.
Simply put, for your little "rule" to be true so must each of the following conditions:
1. Transport by sea must always be cheaper than any other method of transport
2. Direct transport to any given location must always be cheaper than indirect transport to that same location
3. Locations with no access to a seaport must be assumed not to consume imports for reason of that seaport's absence.
Each of these assumptions is not simply demonstrably false - they are all demonstrably absurd as well, and the collapse of any one of them makes your little "rule" collapse as well.