The Council for Mutual Economic Assistance had taken over the entire trade market of the Eastern Kingdoms. In less than two years, the merchants' guilds and Trading Families of every nation had all met a sudden end.
In those two short years, the leaders of the Alliance nations' great Trading Families had not even figured out why their markets were being swallowed up so quickly before Kul Tiras's immense industrial capacity dominated every secondary sales channel and even the suppliers under their guilds.
Aside from the Barov and Agamand guilds, the smarter merchants' guilds immediately cut their losses and embraced Kul Tiras's Council for Mutual Economic Assistance, keeping their businesses running.
Cheap goods and strict profit controls could no longer provide guild leaders, or the nobles above them, with the vast trading profits they had once enjoyed. Still, that was better than being swallowed whole and losing their businesses altogether.
Of course, for every clever guild, there was a stubborn family.
They refused to accept Kul Tiras's trade reforms, and they liked living under the rules of Rowan's trading game even less.
These old noble houses began trading commercial concessions for political favors, hoping to win the support of their respective royal families.
But under the immense pressure of war, the royal families could not sever ties with Kul Tiras. The interests bound up in the war had already tied the nations tightly together.
After the Scourge War and the Northrend Campaign, Lordaeron had declined. Not one of the Alliance's six nations could rival Kul Tiras anymore.
And so, without royal support, the noble merchants' guilds had no choice but to spend their reserves fighting price wars against the trading guilds under Kul Tiras's Council for Mutual Economic Assistance.
The outcome was obvious. No matter how much money they poured