China exports like a trillion dollars of value more than it imports, and it seems to actively maintain this stance - Does it? And if so, why? My reductive ape-brain says if more goods are leaving your country than coming in, then other countries are accumulating actual goods, and your country is accumulating pieces of paper (or digital bits). Seems like a losing strategy.

Why not just make all the goods that your country wants (especially if you're an enormous country that can scale economies and has access to strategic materials like China) and then you'd have more stuff?

And how do currency exchange markets fit in? I thought exporting and importing and fluctuating value of currencies meant that it should all sort of 'balance out' in the end. Because prices of currencies change the value of export/import and consequently you'd eventually have a country that exports and imports the same value of goods.

Maybe I fundamentally misunderstand the purpose of trade. Or maybe I've been playing too much Victoria 3.

  • ZoomeristLeninist [they/them, she/her]M
    ·
    2 years ago

    love to micromanage vicky3 to the point of checking each building type's employment saturation and the volume of input/output commodities to maximize employment

      • ZoomeristLeninist [they/them, she/her]M
        ·
        2 years ago

        if i wanted stress-free fun id play bugsnax. i need to make every country i play a communist manufacturing powerhouse with an incredible standard of living

        • GorbinOutOverHere [comrade/them]
          ·
          2 years ago

          I do that without all that effort all you gotta do is just build shit also it helps if you join the British or French market if you're a small country to get immigrants (but then you gotta get independence later)

          • ZoomeristLeninist [they/them, she/her]M
            ·
            2 years ago

            yeah that works for a lot of countries but i like playing the Great Qing, Russia, USA, etc. im in an Ottoman run rn and you really have to perfect ur construction strategy to get rid of the "sick man of europe" journal entry

        • CarmineCatboy [he/him]
          ·
          2 years ago

          this might sound dumb but i'm waiting to see if any of the cold war mods make it to vicky 3. i dunno why but having a revolution in the post war just seems more attractive to me i dunno why.