Pickering hurriedly began bargaining. This export volume was only a third of what it had once been; if it were truly enforced, the United States' finances would collapse within months.
After two days of relentless pleading and pestering, with even Hamilton, one of the United States' five great magnates, coming to beg on their behalf, Lamerte finally put on an exasperated expression and laid out the true armistice terms sent from Paris:
"My bottom line—this is also my final meeting with you gentlemen before the agreement is signed—is this: exports of timber and bitumen will be unrestricted. Cotton exports to England may not exceed eight million pounds. Wheat is forbidden from being sold to England. As for 'private dealings' in cane sugar, all of them must be reported to the Louisiana Government."
Pickering and Hamilton both breathed a sigh of relief.
The United States did not export much wheat, so it could simply redirect it to the Caribbean Nations, at worst selling it for a somewhat lower price.
Last year, eleven million pounds of cotton had been sold to England. The reduction was barely tolerable. A large portion of it could be shipped to France aboard Smuggling Ships, though there was the danger of seizure by the British Navy.
Most importantly, the French had stopped obstructing cane sugar smuggling. By now, smuggling cane sugar out of the Caribbean had become a "pillar industry" of the United States.
It was not that Joseph was easygoing. Ninety percent of the income of Saint-Domingue and similar nations depended on cane sugar exports. With the English Fleet threatening them, French merchant ships still could not travel to the Caribbean Sea. If American smuggling were truly cut off, the pro-French Caribbean Nations would collapse.
It was better to regulate the smuggling of sugar there. It