Trade price volume estimate and trade logic, help!

[Coozer]

I am unclear how much of a trade good i can can build up to export into a market and what affects it exactly.

For example the UK has a 1.6k deficit of steel and its market price is $71.

As a fee market Japan I am making steel at $52 and the uk has a 10% tariff.

It says I am selling my steel for $71.7 and making and making $18.8 profit. I get this part but im trying to figure out why, or how to estimate, how much my trade volume and production can go up.

In theory- If all prices stayed the same, and I had the shipping it seems I should be able to sell 1.6k....however, ive ramped up my steel mills and they are not employing or increasing export volume as they say there is not enough demand.

Whats going on? Its making it hard to identify goods in detail I want to develop for an export economy.

Its happening for clothes in the Russian market as well.

[TasteDasRainbow]

There are issues with local market prices affecting how goods cost between international local markets and the profit traders would otherwise make, so it generally doesn't line up to make sense of.

I wouldn't try to hyper focus other market deficits for value. It's much better to generically focus refined high consumption goods for profit that will inevitably see demand from populations. Construction center goods, critical pop needs, admin goods, infrastructure goods, etc. all display inelastic goods for profit.

Other issues with your stated production could be input good prices like coal or iron, your infrastructure might be affecting MAPI local pricing, rarely a lack of qualifications from no uni, and a thing particular to japan also being insufficient convoys.

[alexander.julian.erhard]

While I don´t know all details about trade (for example, where the trade center of a given route appears), generally it works this way:
If you start a trade route, somewhere in your country a trade center is spawned.
Import routes generate buy orders in the target market and sell orders in your market,
Export routes generate sell orders in the target market and buy orders in your market.
If the respective countries have tariffs, they each get tariff rate * number of goods traded * base value as tariff revenue.
The trade center gets (price in importing market minus price in exporting market) * number of goods traded minus tariffs as revenue.
You can also reformulate this as:
Trade center revenue = number of goods traded * base value of good * (relative price in importing market minus relative price in exporting market minus tariff rates)

For example if you trade 10 steel, which has a base value of 50, export it from your market with -20% relative price to the UK market with +30% relative price, you have Free Trade and the UK has 10% tariffs, then your trade center gets
10*50*(0.3 -(-0.2) - 0.1) = 10*50*0.4 =200 revenue.

Each Trade Center also employs some people and naturally wants to see some revenue.
If that revenue per person is high enough (not sure exactly how high that is), the trade route will grow, employing more people and transporting more goods.
If the revenue is too low or even negative, it will shrink or remain at 1 until canceled.
Not having enough convoys will also stop trade routes from growing or even shrink them.

So pretty much for trade routes to be profitable, you´ll always require at least some percent relative difference between your market and another market. If there are tariffs between your markets, trade routes require at least the sum of tariff rates plus an additional relative difference to be profitable.


As for your Steel Mill not employing up due to presumably saying increasing employment would make it unprofitable:
Steel Mills are probably the building with the least relative difference between output good value and input good value. For example the first PM at base goods value requires an input of: 40 Iron, base value 40 and 30 coal, base value 30, so 40*40+30*30 = 2500
It produces 65 Steel worth 50 each, therefore 65*50 = 3250.
This means comparatively small differences in relative prices are already enough to make it unprofitable: For example already Steel at -10% and Iron and Coal both at +10% reduces profits from 3250-2500 = 750 down to 3250*0.9 - 2500*1.1 = 175.