On [@Iluvatar]'s trade prospects:

Trying to force yourself to go that far is an expensive proposition for a nation so loosely scattered and owning so few natural resources of their own. The islands may have forests but they're not necessarily hardwoods for the sea and there's the hard choices of trying to produce staple foods and cash crops on limited space. You're operating on space more limited than the rest of us and expecting to build really long and complicated trade-routes into possibly hostile waters. After all for rubber you're looking at literally sailing 4,000 km from Bermuda to the largest post at the mouth of the Amazon Basin (Belem).

Where as the straight distance from Bermuda to Savannah to trade rum and sugar for staple crops is a much more reasonable 1,500km.

You're trying to jump far too quickly to something far too distant in order to claim something to make you seem better as opposed to trying to involve yourself just with North America and forge something actually cool. It's also simpler and would be much better to accomplish with present technology.