Given the historic political sparring between Senators Star and Oriel, I suspect Volus' trade ban has an all-too-convenient flavoring to it. From the perspective of the Commerce committee, it may be beneficial to propose a bill, after this trade dispute is settled, that would prevent individual member planets from imposing trade bans on other member planets' incoming goods. In light of our mutual discussion on free trade in the public Senate forum, it would seem that standing Imperial law would favor Vjun in this case and that Volus is in the wrong to arbitrarily set trade restrictions without Imperial Senate oversight. In effect, Volus is violating standing Imperial free trade agreements by imposing 100% tariff rates on particular Vjun-based trade goods. While Vjun may be justified in its punitive counter-bans, its economic sanctions are also illegal for the same reasons stated above.

Once it is established that Volus and Vjun cannot arbitrarily ban one another's trade goods without Imperial consent, I recommend a third-party investigation into the alleged 'ban list' of trade items inbound to Volus to see if there is any legal bearing to the ban on, most notably, Vjun tunics. I already fear this dispute has already cost the Imperial treasury millions of credits from canceled business orders and lowered trade volume.

Please let me know if you need any additional help clarifying the Committee's opinion on this matter, or writing up a bill that would make such intra-Imperial 'trade wars' impossible in the future.