That said, you have to focus on the exporting, too. Early farmers like Art Vandelay, whose great great great grandson went on to become a judge, came to realize this.
Imported products tended to be luxury goods, and weren’t usually articles of everyday use.
Wheat, cotton, barley, coal, and even imported goods like coffee and tea, were simple goods, not complicated products like cars, or televisions or pharmaceuticals. Regulation wasn’t really required.
Plus, in Jefferson’s day, you’d use the wood outside your house for heating, not coal. You’d use local stone and wood, not marble. If wheat wouldn’t grow, you’d eat corn or buckwheat or rye. You might eat meat that you hadn’t killed, but it didnt come from two thousand miles away. In spite of national and international trade, it was a simpler world.
Certainly there were industries, but their impact on your life wouldn’t have been what it is today.
That said, you have to focus on the exporting, too. Early farmers like Art Vandelay, whose great great great grandson went on to become a judge, came to realize this.