[G]That's like saying the North was in no way prohibited from taking advantage of the cotton gin or the slave system, and their failure to do so left a rather large hole in the 'unfair economic practices led to separation' paradigm.
Nonsense Gianni. Take a look at what the Warehousing Act of 1854 says.
Sec. 4. And be it further enacted, That all goods, wares, and merchandise, which may be hereafter duly entered for warehousing under bond, and likewise all merchandise [not] now remaining in warehouse under bond, may continue in warehouse, without payment of duties thereupon, for a period of three years from the date of original importation, and my be withdrawn for consumption on due entry and payment of duties and charges, or upon entry for exportation, without the payment of duties, at any time within the period aforesaid; in the latter case, the goods to be subject only to the payment of such storage and charges as may be due thereon: Provided, however, that where the duties shall have been paid upon any goods, wares, or merchandizes entered for consumption, said duties shall not be refunded on exportation of any such goods, wares, or merchandizes, without the limits of the United States: and provided further, That there shall be no abatement of the duties, or allowance made for any injury, damage, deterioration, loss or leakage sustained by any goods, wares, or merchandise, whilst deposited in any public or private bonded warehouse established or recognized by this act.
The Warehousing Act didn't specify that the imported merchandise must reside in the North or the South, and Charleston [like New Orleans] was an active seaport involved in international trade. All that was required was a warehouse to store the imports AND an economic reason for doing so.
Either Southern businessmen lacked the business acumen [or carpentry skills] to take advantage of the Warehousing Act, or warehousing large quantities of imports in the South did not make economic sense to them. If the latter is true, then the assertion that the South was a huge consumer of imported goods and by consequence paid a disproportionate amount of the tariff on them is false.
The same logic may be applied to the phony premise that the Navigation Act was detrimental to the South. Even casual research on Southern seaports of that time would reveal that they were ship builders in their own right, especially of smaller craft that could be used in domestic traffic. A requirement that merchandise delivered from one domestic port to another be done on an American built and owned vessel in no way prevented the South from building, buying or owning such vessels.
[G] is there anything, today, preventing North Dakota from taking advantage of coal subsidies? Or gaining benefit from a steel tariff? It seems those would be acts tartgeted to benefit states like West Virginia or Pennsylvania, regardless of where they apply.
Another poorly drawn analogy that doesn't fit the circumstances here. In addition to their own seaports, the South enjoyed the competitive advantage of having the major export product [cotton] grown closer to their own seaports than any in the North. If they had been a bit more diligent about developing a diverse economy that included storage and distribution facilities, they could have benefited quite well from the Navigation and Warehousing Acts. Failure to do so was no one's fault but their own.
A perfectly drawn analogy.
The South was as geographically challenged in the area of European trade as mondern-day Iowa or Kansas are in the mining of coal. As such, any federal subsidy or favoritism to the coal industry is bound to favor West Virginia more than Iowa or Kansas; no different from favorable trade laws in the mid-1800s.
Combine that with generations of infrastructure development in Northeastern shipping, and it did not make economic sense for the South to invest in trying to catch up. It has already been stated that investment of the Southern dollar saw a higher return when invested in the plantation & slave labor system, so it should be no surprise that's where their dollars went, and their rhetoric focused on it's justification as our friends MEspinola, Colonel Kangaroo have pointed out. I'm sure if one looked, one could find similar (but not as well-publicized) quotes from Northeasterners with respect to the slave trade, but history has chosen to bury them.
The importance of the Warehousing Act was that it sealed the dominance of the port of New York in international trade. In order to take advantage of the regulations, a seaport had to be engaged in massive export/import traffic. New Orleans did take advantage of the regulations, but essentially New York put other seaports on the eastern seaboard into the second tier.
The Act was signed into law on February 28, 1854. The monumentous importance of this was that importers could warehouse their goods for up to three years before paying the tariff.
That meant they could sell their goods to obtain the money needed to pay the tariff fees and then pay it upon removing the sold goods from the warehouse. This offered a vast savings in finance costs to the owner.
Another major advantage to the merchants was that they did not have to carry large sums of cash on hand to pay tariffs immediately after they dropped off their cargoes, which in turn made it easier to ship goods that had no immediate buyer waiting at the docks.
Congress created secure and duty-free enclaves under federal control in order to encourage merchants here and abroad to make use of American ports. It also meant that trading organizations could better deal with market fluctuations by withholding goods for sale until conditions improved.
New York became the warehousing center of the country because it had readily convertible facilities. Businessmen shipped across the Atlantic to New York, warehoused for up to three years, and then shipped out of New York warehouses up the coast and inland to all over the U.S.
With this act, New York merchants sealed their dominance over the cotton trade.