Interns at the DIT are reportedly spending up to 17 hours a day declining trade deals. One insider, who wished to remain anonymous, told us:

“I don’t even read incoming trade proposals anymore. I’ve just set all new requests to auto-decline after a few weeks of sitting on my desk."

Trade is a particularly sensitive issue for the Lorax government, following the leak of a recent internal report which confirmed the DIT had issued a number of trade deals to the same empire which cancelled each other out. Florgen refused to comment on this, but our anonymous source continued:

“Oh, yeah we were idiots on this one. So basically we were trading 10 minerals per month to Sentinel Systems, our neighbours, for 10 energy credits per month. Standard 10 year deal. But somewhere along the line we accidentally made another deal and traded 10 energy credits per month for 10 minerals per month, for 10 years. So… we’re effectively not trading at all.”

Materialists from across the galaxy have been calling on the Galactic UN to overhaul trade laws, to include more flexible trade agreements, an index of all available resources, and minimum pricing tariffs for strategic resources.

The Galactic UN responded, stating it was aware of the issue but its priority at present remains on legalizing the construction of planet-destroying superweapons.

Florgen, on hearing this news, told us:

“I now finally understand how fanatical purifiers come about…”