Your liberty was subject to Federal government regulation of trade between nations, as mentioned before. Just as you cannot unilaterally declare war on a nation, neither can you unilaterally make foreign trade policy.
National security limitations are always necessary. The history of the world and our nation tells us that we will be at war whether we invite it or not on many occasions to come. The paramount duty of our federal government is to provide for the common defense.
After defense considerations, then it is an open question as to what products we protect or not, what constitutes the best and least restrictive or most sensible policy with a given nation. It is a delicate balance. But it is one that is the purview of we the people, as represented by our elected officials. It should never be the purview of anyone else.
Fine and mostly agreed.
Shouldn’t the defense issue be narrowly defined though?
What we’ve had is an enormous expansion of government by broadly defining the Commerce Clause, no? It has interrupted state’s rights and in the end the rights of the people.
If the defense issue is broad and interpreted by those ignorant of the benefits of freest trade, then you get sugar tariffs or subsidies to ADM for “national security” reasons.
You could even imagine an America in which our politicians made it impossible to industrialize or for the population to move to cities because our agricultural base was a “national security” issue, no?
In the end they were wrong, although many argued that you cannot have a nation without a massive agricultural population. Today we have the lowest farm population ever and grow the most ever.