(Trade and Commerce) Clans in the empire try to remain as independent as possible to ensure they can't be held hostage economically by another clan. Most tend to try and balance the resources available with factors such as military forces, agriculture and the like. Strong skills in accountancy, economic forecasting and other business skills are actually more favored than diplomacy skills. Aronhi accountants and business managers are very good at running organizations with balanced books.
Of course fate will always deal a blow to a clan requiring them to either go to war or trade to acquire resources to balance their books.
While trade between clans for currency does happen, they tend to be brokered for military or political support in larger issue by the clan providing the resource.
Political groups are normally formed by these interweaved mix of IOUs shared among clans. They often tend to build up over time and a unique industry has cropped up over the last 500 years to track these IOUs and how they affect any given clan in a given political, economic or military situation.
Clans tend to try and buy their way out of these IOUs if they can with landgrants, use of military assets in conflict, as guards or garrison forces, or supplying the use of other resources. Most of the values of IOUs are based on 'manpower' hours rather than in currency, so don't change in value over time, expect for the capabilities of the clan which owes the favor.
Within a clan a lot of daily commerce occurs and individual families tend to manage such business. Each family tends to run them as separate businesses. Clans may own a larger operation with family operations being subcontracted for various specialized parts of the operation.
In interstellar commerce, trade vessels tend to be auxiliary military transports operated to transport freight and passengers between worlds. Most operated schedules routes and are filling subcontracts with other businesses. Some operations are formal, while others are flexible. Most never operate large transport or trade firm like Terran corporations. However several large co-operatives have formed amongst many families to help streamline trade and commerce throughout a clan.
Often Co-operatives do form amounts facilities of differing clans, where it has made economic sense to do so, typically when shipping lanes cross different territories, where alliance resource exchanges occur or where joint operations exist out of mutual interest of alliance operations as a result of IOUs.
The Aronhi in contact initially with the Stotatl and Terrans had no interest in trade, but as the Serpenti War headed up and Aronhi space was invaded, a number of clans agreed to trade with Terran corporations to compensate for loss of access to their core territory.
While the Aronhi are not good traders in terms of barter and negotiation, their accountants and managers are good at evaluating whether a deal makes economic sense or not. Consequently the Aronhi can seem very inflexible in negotiation, and aren't huge profit seekers. So long as they get goods and services at economic prices, they seek their own goods and services at fair and reasonable prices. Many white collar commercial traders haven't gotten on with Aronhi, often being intimidated by the physical nature and behavior of the Aronhi. The more down to Earth blue collar or street trade negotiator tends to handle the Aronhi better.
Draconians have also traded with the Aronhi on occasion. They find they hard to deal with, and are often a bit more pushy in deals, being more accustomed to negotiating with a diversity of alien species. However over the past couple of years they have tended to ensure they have some muscle along from more heavy weight species to ensure negotiations remain balanced. They often hire human security firms and even Orcoks for such assignments. To keep costs down the Draconians tend to time about a third of their Aronhi trade missions with Coalition diplomatic missions so they have Ilkanian and Andorian diplomats along with Andorian warrior escorts.
Many Aronhi prefer negotiating with Terrans or Aratani and in recent months have even tried negotiating through human security people onboard Draconian traders. The Draconians have found this a bit offensive but have looked into hiring some former Coalition trained Daryne military liaison officers to replace human security, and use them as trade intermediaries, without compromising Draconian trade talks.
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