Customs Union Questions

[Questionable]

New to the game. As Brazil, I joined the British Customs Union. Now I'm getting pretty powerful, should I leave it and start my own, and why or why not?

[Midas]

A custom union means you participate at the trade there, so you use all their resources, and merge them with yours. But you are stuck as side country. Also, if your standart of living is high, you get pops from india etc. if its at their market.

When you leave them, you also leave the resource nodes etc. behind that this market provides

[girolamocastaldo]

The only compelling reasons to leave it I can see are:
- their market is importing from you a lot of the resources you need;
- you plan to challenge GB economically and/or militarily.

[teron]

If you do plan on leaving, you want to build up your input good base. E.g. lumber mills, mines, farms/plantations. Paper for your admin buildings

Plus have shipyards(and their input goods), ports and extra admin capacity ready to start establishing trade routes to import your resource good shortfalls.

Since last thing you want to discover after leaving the GB custom union is you have a wood and hardwood shortfall which trigger a tools, clippers, and paper shortfall.

Also a good idea to save before leaving, then leave to see what your shortfalls are. Then reload the save.

[RandyNewman]

You can keep the status quo for awhile. With Brazil, it's quicker and easier to conquer neighboring South American states than it is to start a customs union with them (The AI will go the entire campaign without building a single sulfer mine, so save the diplomatic niceties for the more general good producers, like Argentina).

You can still take land while you're in the GB's customs union, and personally I'd probably wait to start an independent union until I had better immigrant attraction and a few sulfer/oil deposits. Just keep your infamy in check so you don't get kicked out and isolated.

[Questionable]

The only downside is I can't annex my own puppets of Peru, Bolivia, and small Argentina because they're quasi protected by GB customs union. Meaning if I have good relations with GB, I can't even initiate the play. Oh well, I guess puppets they remain cause -300k per month I get with British market access seems like about twice what they're all worth. And now that I'm a great power, I can't rejoin their customs union.

[Kimlin]

There’s a risk with overseas markets that when they go to war you will lose all market access for the duration of the war. That’s the biggest risk in a Custom Union

[Geffalrus]

Leaving a customs union can do terrible things to your economy if you don't plan ahead and make sure that you have the necessary base resources to support your complex products to support things like your military industrial complex. Last thing you want is to run out of ammunition while fighting a war.

Granted, same thing can happen when you - join - a big customs union, because that changes your supply/demand pretty dramatically.

So all in all, you might need to pause, and go around doing some math to see if you can support your necessary industries. As Bolivia-Peru, I rejected a GB customs union because I saw that they were severly lacking in ironclads and other resources that I had achieved balanced production in. Had I joined, those goods would have become a lot more expensive for me, and that would blow up my budget and weaken my military.

[Questionable]

The Brazilian people are just too used to their silk and opium, I guess.

[lefty1117]

I don't think you make as much on tariffs in a trade union, you can't control them anyway if you are a member and not the leader of the union. But the unions are absolutely wonderful, essential even, for minor powers. Playing as Greece once you join a trade union the standard of living absolutely skyrockets. I reckon leaving a trade union would be pretty tough as a small country because you probably won't have enough natural resources to support your countries demands, which will be high because the manufacturing sector is likely to be ahead of where it would have been without the support of the union.