This paper analyzes the struggles over the fate of the import-export tariff system during the early decades of Lebanese independence (1943-1975). Conflict around this system represented one of the central arenas of elite and popular mobilizations as part of the broader set of struggles to define the political economy of Lebanon, which was ultimately organized around an open laissez-faire service-based economy. First, I explore the shifting patterns of alliances and conflicts that animated these struggles as part of a broader struggle to shape the nature of state-market relations and organize the post-colonial political economy of Lebanon. I highlight how these struggles were informed by the normative and institutional legacies of the Ottoman Empire and French mandate, but ultimately shaped by the strategies of elite and popular groups that were mobilized around said institutions. Neither sectarian (e.g., Maronite vs. Sunni) nor sectoral (e.g., commercial vs. industrial) interests alone sufficiently explain the patterns of alliance and conflict under consideration. The model of collective action that I utilize locates agency in networks that cut across classes, sectarian identities, and corporate interests, bringing together partners who might be united for particular short- or long-term goals. These networks were manifested through both formal (e.g., party affiliation) and informal (e.g., marriage) relationships. Second, I analyze how “the Lebanese state” was (re)produced through specific representational practices that were normalized through these struggles. Explicit discourses about the state and the economy saturated public cultural texts, including newspapers, government reports, and political leaflets. I thus argue that the making of specific state institutions (and thus Lebanon’s economy) was itself the making of “the Lebanese nation-state” as a form of political sociability. Both lines of inquiry, that of the struggle around the import-export tariff system and the attendant cultural constitution of “the Lebanese state” shed light on processes of state and market formation in early independence Lebanon. Thus, my paper poses a challenge to prevailing narratives of Lebanese politics in these years and highlights the contingency of state-led economic development in the Middle East and other late developing countries.