If certain items were not on Aglaia five year plan, the STO officials said they were sorry but there was no reason to discuss trade of those items. But Aglaia did want to trade with the two other societies. When the price was discussed, West said they would accept Aglaian kupecks, but Aglaia said its currrency could not be taken out of the country. Aglaia insisted that the other societies take goods manufactured in Aglaia in trade for products it desired. Westerns and Tropicanos officials thought privately that this was barter, which they did a very long time ago, but the Aglaian officials insisted on calling it "countertrade". They were also not willing to allow Western or Tropicano persons to own equity in investments in Aglaia, where all of the means of productios and distribution was owned by the state with the exception of one province of Aglaia, where it was owned by the workers in each plant. West and Tropicana began to trade with Agalia, but it was quite limited. West was very much concerned with the concept of state ownership in Aglaia, and was wary of this new society.
Through the years the three societies developped different ways of gaining advantages in their trading relationships, and in minimizing the disadvantageous effects of the others' trade activities. The nations had all originally been agrarian economies, beginning to produce other items only when they developed more efficient forms of farming. When one family could produce enough for two families, one family could begin to make other goods, such as pottery or tools. But the idea of owning land remained important to them. It always seemed to dominate the policies in Tropicana, where land reform tended to reduce the development of economical agricultural production. But Tropicana also had higher population growth rates than West and Aglaia, and there were mouths to feed. Ultimately Tropicana followed a pattern of encouraging extensive industrial production, and moved first to produce goods within Tropicana which they formerly imported. This became known as "import substitution" and reduced the need for Tropicana to use some of the scarce hard currency of West they possessed to import these items. Of course the Westerns producers disliked the loss of their export market of these items. Sometimes Western capital would entered Tropicana to produce the items locally, but Tropicana made it difficult for foreign capital to invest locally once Tropicana realized that the profits form the sales continued to benefit the Westerns. The only apparent benefits they saw to Tropicana was the employment of some Tropicanos making the products in Tropicana. Tropicana first it would acquire new technology, but soon discovered that the technology introduced tended to be most advanced possessed by the Western companies.
Import substitution worked well in some instances for Tropicana, but they soon began to feel that to be like West they must produce for export. West had grown to be a rich nation partly because of its exports to Tropicana and more recently to Aglaia. No one could quite explain how all nations could be net exporters, but Tropicana was determined to export larger amounts of production. But they then realized that their restrictive investment policies, which had long protected Tropicana industries, had caused the perpetuation of highly inefficient Tropicano producers. They were unable to produce goods which could compete with Westerns products either in the Western market or in Aglaia. It seemed the "term trade" were not improving. The nation once had to trade one (later two) barrel of wine for a West garment. Now it had trade four barrels for the same single garment. But garment production was moving to Tropicana. Tropicano labor was cheaper than that of West and Aglaia. Tropicana was developing a comparative advantage in producing garments and it was not long before a great many of the garments bought in West bore a Tropicana label. The use of Tropicana labels was somewhat new. When Tropicana products first reached West, disgruntled Westner producers who were forced to compete for the first time with foreign products tried to wage a campaign that Tropicanos products were inferior solely because they were Tropicanos. At first it worked and West even passed laws requiring the origin of the goods to appear on the label. But many persons bought the goods anyway, and learned that they were not all inferior. In time, the label "Made in Tropicana" even gained a measure of quality and status.
