Can a team be consistently competitive if the owner zeros out the international scouting budget and ignores that market altogether?  It seems like some of the biggest studs are internationals, but it also seems like the market for the top international prospects involves huge dollar amounts.  So... can you win consistently if you just avoid it completely?

Sure you can. Sign players in the draft and fill your roster with ML free agents.

Plenty of people do this. If you want to win now, this is probably the best strategy to pursue. You save $12-$20 on scouting and another $20+ from your prospect budget, which means you have a good $30 to spend on free agents. You can get two superstars (or 4-5 solid ML starting players) for that amount of money.

The best player I ever had was an IFA. But eventually I decided to head to zero for my international scouting. It is true that there are some great players to be found, real game-changers. When I got that great IFA, in Season 10, he cost $17 million ... when he retired, he went to the HoF on his first try. And with him, I won my only WS, in Season 18. By that season, though, the top IFA went for $22.5 million. The next season, five players went for $22 million or more (topped at $30.5). Season 20, one guy went for $32.4 million. And on it goes (our most recent season, S35, saw one player go for $28.2 million).

Each league is different, but clearly, in my league, the best IFAs go for extravagant sums, far more than I will pay. So I'm zeroing out my International budget and concentrating on college players in the draft.

I've been in 4 WS (lost them all) in the last 7 years.  I long ago zeroed out International Scouting. 

I'm another who got out of international scouting... five seasons ago.  Depends on how the owners in your world treat it, but in mine, as mentioned before, the best players go for 30 million plus.  If that isn't enough, we have one owner who plays IFA strictly to try to get THE top player every season.  Why even bother facing off with a guaranteed loss?  Sure, when it works you get a guaranteed HOF player.  So I'll probably never have the pleasure of looking at that type of player's stats on my team.  I get to try to find other ways to win, and like arcticlegend said, I have an extra 30 million bucks to do whatever I want with.

Before I chose to get out of IFA, the only two big IFAs I ever got were both players who showed up after everyone else spent their money.  One actually dropped in the second last cycle of the season.

These days I actually keep 1 or 2 million in IFA, just to see a minimal number of players.  Might pick up a lottery ticket here or there, maybe a bench guy or future DiTR, with the leftover money I have from my draft prospects.

Also, given the new "fuzzy scouting", this season I started to see a number of "Huge Signings" on the front page that looked like overpays.  So that looks to me to be changing things.

I do the opposite.  I zero out my high school and college scouting.