>>transport becomes a bigger concern. Not just for cost: some observers claim that 6 container ships burning bunker oil can produce more greenhouse gas than all the motor vehicles on the planet. You can imagine the pressures not to buy goods tainted with that.
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>I was impressed, in a bad way, with the ease with which the two oil shocks from the 70s and 80s have left zero impact on this scheme. Somehow it's cheaper to haul all those things across the oceans... where's the OPEC to make that impractical? Where's that peak oil? Is the local worker so much more expensive to offset all that?

Container ships have a nice ratio of fuel used per weight and distance. Trucking across country is much worse, but still not expensive enough to squash moving low cost produce like beer across relatively large distance.