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Opinion of the Court
him from exploitation by any. Such was the vision of the Founders; such has been the doctrine of this Court which has given it reality." H. P. Hood & Sons, Inc. v. Du Mond, 336 U. S. 525, 539 (1949).
See also, e. g., Wyoming v. Oklahoma, 502 U. S. 437, 469 (1992) (Scalia, J., dissenting) ("Our negative Commerce Clause jurisprudence grew out of the notion that the Constitution implicitly established a national free market . . ."); Reeves, Inc. v. Stake, 447 U. S., at 437 (The dormant Commerce Clause prevents "state taxes and regulatory measures impeding free private trade in the national marketplace"); Hunt v. Washington State Apple Advertising Comm'n, 432 U. S. 333, 350 (1977) (referring to "the Commerce Clause's overriding requirement of a national 'common market' "). Thus, in the absence of actual or prospective competition between the supposedly favored and disfavored entities in a single market there can be no local preference, whether by express discrimination against interstate commerce or undue burden upon it, to which the dormant Commerce Clause may apply. The dormant Commerce Clause protects markets and participants in markets, not taxpayers as such.
Our cases have, however, rarely discussed the comparability of taxed or regulated entities as operators in arguably distinct markets; the closest approach to the facts here occurred in Alaska v. Arctic Maid, 366 U. S. 199 (1961). In Arctic Maid, a 4% tax on the value of salmon taken from territorial waters by so-called freezer ships and frozen for transport and later canning outside the State was challenged as discriminatory in the face of a 1% tax on the value of fish taken from territorial waters and frozen by on-shore cold storage facilities for later sale on the domestic fresh-frozen fish market. The State prevailed on the Court's holding that the claimants and cold storage facilities served separate markets, did not compete with one another, and thus could not properly be compared for Commerce Clause purposes. The proper comparison, the Court held, was between the freezer
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