You are Julia Arredondo-Vial, executive secretary of the Costaria–Boravia Joint Economic Commission. A new container line will open trade between two countries that have always lived on what they produce. Before it sails, by 18:00 on Friday, April 17, 2026, you must tell both cabinets how to split their workers for the last season without trade.
The situation
Costaria is a small coastal republic of 2 million people, with 1 million workers, mango orchards in the north and a young software industry in the capital. Boravia has 18 million people, 10 million workers, mature technology firms and greenhouses run by agronomists. Per worker per year, Boravia produces 200 mangoes or 200 software units; Costaria, 100 mangoes or 50 units.
Last season, Costaria kept 60% of its workers in mangoes: 60 million mangoes and 20 million software units, or 30 mangoes and 10 units per Costarian. Boravia split its workers evenly and produced 1,000 million of each good, about 55.6 per citizen. The commission works in physical units, because there is no agreed exchange rate, and this season each country will still consume exactly what it produces.
The line will cut the crossing from fourteen days to three. Whatever you set now will be the starting point of the commission's next paper, and anyone who changes sector from then on will count as a displaced worker. The press has taken sides: Boravia's leading business daily asks what a country that produces less of everything could possibly sell it; Costaria's opposition warns that trade will wipe out farmers and coders alike.
Tomás Echeverri-Luna, Costaria's Minister of Production, has sent you one line: what should the orchards plant this season? Marek Ostrovan, Boravia's Trade Minister, has called twice this afternoon.