GDP through trade as a primary strategy?
I'm in the middle of a Netherlands playthrough and I've been using trade to aid in developing my own industry and encourage good investment pool allocation. There are many profitable trade routes that I forego to protect industry and discourage agriculture.
With Netherlands though, it's very easy to get to free trade and to get a ton of trade agreements with powers like Prussia, Austria, Russia, Qing. I have an idea for a campaign where growth is driven primarily through trade arbitrage and I focus mostly on construction and pumping trade centers as high as possible. It would be a low-expansion, low-infamy strategy where I take treaty ports or smaller conquests to gain interests and connect as much trade as possible and arbitrage myself to #1 sol and GDP per capita. Of course some strategic resources would also need to be secured. Would this even be viable? Best candidates? I'm interested in Portugal as a possible campaign. Could I become a GP with this strategy?
The main downsides are:
- heavy investment in ports
- allowing free flow of goods would depress prices in home-grown industry
- investment pool would be allocated suboptimally since I would export a lot of agricultural goods
Obviously this is off-meta and more of a role-play, but I wonder if it could be a path for a minor nation with some existing interests (like Portugal).