Paul Krugman has an interesting post up today regarding ‘hyperglobalization’ that bears upon this discussion, I think… 

I suspect this kind of thing could well be folded into Traveller…and some of it already is; as TL is defined as ‘what can be made locally’. Consider a TL-12 grav truck manufactured with TL-14 control systems imported from a TL-15 world. There could a lot of lucrative trade in shipping parts, not whole widgets.

His post gets into costs and protectionsim, which I’m certain would bear heavily in the OTU, even if they don’t talk about it...