The Dominion of Trade Syndicate is a small, efficient nation, renowned for its barren, inhospitable landscape, compulsory military service, and spontaneously combusting cars. The hard-nosed, hard-working, cynical, devout population of 36 million Trade Syndicateans are rabid consumers, partly through choice and partly because the government tells them to and dissenters tend to vanish from their homes at night.

The tiny, pro-business, well-organized government juggles the competing demands of Defense, Law & Order, and Administration. Citizens pay a flat income tax of 7.5%.

The very strong Trade Syndicatean economy, worth 2.46 trillion Corpoes a year, is broadly diversified and led by the Pizza Delivery industry, with significant contributions from Woodchip Exports, Book Publishing, and Basket Weaving. Average income is 68,307 Corpoes, but there is a large disparity between incomes, with the richest 10% of citizens earning 286,506 per year while the poor average 10,591, a ratio of 27.1 to 1.

Newspapers are celebrating Leader saving over a million cats from trees, you need two tenors and a coloratura contralto to sing the national anthem properly, vacationers and business travelers are often warned that they may lose the right to vote if they spend too much time overseas, and the nation's streets have become a winter wonderland of salt and sand. Crime is a problem, with the police force struggling against a lack of funding and a high mortality rate. Trade Syndicate's national animal is the elephant, which teeters on the brink of extinction due to widespread deforestation.

Trade Syndicate is ranked 317,604^th in the world and 16^th in The Sapphirelands for Largest Black Market, with 4.00 billion Standard Monetary Units.