650
Opinion of the Court
narrow bases of justification is shown, see Oregon Waste, ante, at 100-101, actual discrimination, wherever it is found, is impermissible, and the magnitude and scope of the discrimination have no bearing on the determinative question whether discrimination has occurred. See Wyoming v. Oklahoma, 502 U. S. 437, 454-455 (1992); New Energy Co., 486 U. S., at 276; Maryland, supra, at 760.
Moreover, two Terms ago we implicitly rejected any theory that would require aggregating the burdens on commerce across an entire State to determine the constitutionality of a burden on interstate trade imposed by a particular political subdivision of the State. We concluded that proper analysis of the practice of one county that discriminated against interstate trade was "unaffected by the fact that some other counties [in the State] ha[d] adopted a different policy." Fort Gratiot Sanitary Landfill, Inc. v. Michigan Dept. of Natural Resources, 504 U. S. 353, 363 (1992). Contrary to respondents' suggestions, our reasoning indicates that discrimination is appropriately assessed with reference to the specific subdivision in which applicable laws reveal differential treatment.
Any other approach would frustrate the Commerce Clause's central objective of securing a national " 'area of free trade among the several States.' " Boston Stock Exchange v. State Tax Comm'n, 429 U. S. 318, 328 (1977) (quoting McLeod v. J. E. Dilworth Co., 322 U. S. 327, 330 (1944)). Under respondents' view, the Commerce Clause would interpose no bar to the systematic subdivision of the national market through discriminatory taxes as long as the taxes were imposed by counties, rather than by States—and provided, of course, that on balance each State as a whole did not discriminate against interstate trade. Such a rule "would invite a multiplication of preferential trade areas destructive of the very purpose of the Commerce Clause." Dean Milk Co. v. Madison, 340 U. S. 349, 356 (1951). We have never suggested that the Commerce Clause will tolerate such dis-
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