As the global economies have collapsed in the past decade, nothing has been certain except for uncertainty. The world's central banks, drunk on power, loaded their people up with debt and then slowly guided their economies to destruction. That's the consequence of government control of the monetary system and means of exchange. Prices in an economy are like traffic signals, signaling where goods and resources should go and how fast. Central banks distort those traffic signals and even give the wrong signals. That's why we get crashes -- because of government traffic signals, because the government has taken "free" out of the marketplace.
But free trade does occur in the United States in some ways. The black markets are where people trade what they want for the price agreed on, free of taxes and free of government regulations, and at prices that are acceptable to the parties. Simply banning the transaction will not deter some portion of the population from attempting to acquire something -- whether it's bread, tobacco, drugs or guns -- that the government doesn't want us to have, at prices we are willing to pay. People will always trade what they have for what they want or need. That's human nature. That's a natural human right. The government cannot stop that. But, of course, governments have tried to stop the exercise of this right.
During World War II, for example, FDR and his cronies rationed sugar, leather, tea, tobacco, guns, coffee, fuel and many other items our parents and grandparents needed for everyday use. The stated purpose was that the troops needed these items and there was not enough to go around, so the feds would decide who got what and how much all these things would cost. But there was a black market for all these items, and there, the items were plentiful and the price was freely agreed upon. If the government had stayed out of the picture, the market could have existed in the light of day. We now know that FDR was as much interested in control of the population as in supplying the troops.
The government fears trade because it can't control it. The feds would do well to remember the historical truth that where goods and services don't move freely, armies will; and where goods and services do move freely, armies don't. And when the black market becomes more prosperous than the one the government regulates, it will be time to change the government.