Record:The Sound Heard Across La Rossa
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Advisor Marone [IND-Lorma]: So, that's it?
Dux Moretti: It is it, Signore Marone. We will be taking no measures against T'vaqi. My decision is final.
Advisor Marone [IND-Lorma]: This is unbelievable.
Advisor Tritone [I-Tolia]: Are we to just accept them so blatantly closing their doors to us while they dump their foreign goods on us? First our grain, then our chemicals?
Advisor Buonestrotti [M-Buglio]: Just because the goods are foreign, they're not worth buying then? Who do you see producing such-
Advisor Marone [IND-Lorma]: Oh, will you shut your mouth, you nepotist prick, so I don't find myself defending this cow-
[*Thud!*]
[A short-lived feedback loop is smothered.]
Dux Moretti: Enough! We have had plenty of this the last time we have spoken, and I will not stand here to listen to this whole squabble again. When I retire, I will not be leaving this nation in the hands of children! [*deep breath*] We will allow the nation of T'vaqi to exercise its legitimacy. If they desire to shoot themselves in the foot, they may very well be our guests. But I will not allow the same to happen to this nation while we stand to benefit from them. We will hardly suffer from allowing our companies to import advanced foreign technologies.
Advisor Tritone [I-Tolia]: And keep increasing our reliance on foreign goods? As if we haven't entangled enough, what happens when they break our supplies?
Advisor Marone [IND-Lorma]: Do you think this isn't going to continue? This is their second ban on foreign goods in five years! More are certainly to come! They are closing their doors on our domestic producers, all because their little Council of Magisters has slowly but surely been filled by the paranoid and the power-hungry! Do you not see the similarities with Barozzo?
Dux Moretti: It doesn't matter what I see, Signore Marone! We will not be provoking an international fight we aren't certain we are going to win!
Advisor Buonestrotti [M-Buglio]: Thank you. While the previous ban on produce has especially hit my own city-province, it is not of great concern. They are not a giant importer anyways. We may yet become one of their goods.
Advisor Gramuglio [M-Salino]: T'vaqi is a relatively new nation on the world stage. We have not established strong trade routes with them, and our domestic pharmaceutical industry is regardless in its infancy, and far from that of Utlia's, for example. There is no loss to be sustained, because no revenue has been made in the first place.
Dux Moretti: Indeed. Let us not throw away our future on an activist tantrum.
Advisor Marone [IND-Lorma]: And we haven't been importing much from them in the first place.
Advisor Buonestrotti [M-Buglio]: Where are you going with that, Signore Marone?
Advisor Marone [IND-Lorma]: We have nothing to lose from this. Our imports from T'vaqi are barely a rounding error across most industries. We can afford to put some pressure on them. Just a little. We can attempt getting the HoL's backing in this, we can-
Dux Moretti: I'll stop you right there, Signore Marone. I have made my decision, I called you only to inform you.
Advisor Marone [IND-Lorma]: How will this decision of backing down serve us in the future, Giulio? We have spent the last three octades bowing down like cowards to anyone who bothers to threaten us! We are to show them that free trade is a privilege, not a right!
Dux Moretti: That is a move which is risky, which undermines national sovereignty, and one which will paint a target on us which will not be forgotten in the coming years.
Advisor Marone [IND-Lorma]: We already have a target on us! Do you think they don't see what we're doing in Hapšaw? Do you think they like that we're placing our hands on there, constructing roads and building factories for them? It is their sphere of influence, and we have encroached upon it. Is this the story you want? Is this how we back down? They will just keep pushing us, Giulio!
Dux Moretti: Signore Marone...
Advisor Marone [IND-Lorma]: After Barozzo, I expected you to do better. To bring back democracy to us. Perhaps you did. But it doesn't extend from some moral worth to it. In your eyes, it's probably just the most efficient way of doing things.
Dux Moretti: Sign... Signore... Marone...
[*Thud!*]