*The industrialist with his view impact of the impact of low-sec borders on industry and trade. I am not judging the outcome as good or bad*
If low-sec borders were established between all the Empires there will be a need to look at how the basic materials of industry are distributed.
Even if you look at relatively straight-forward T1 manufacturing, ores (and thus minerals) are not distributed equally between the high-sec regions. This could drive low-sec mining for local resources or industrials/transports/freighters full of materials from other empires making runs to undercut local prices.
Secondly, T2 production will be significantly impacted. Currently, Moon types are not "evenly" distributed. Tech is a great example of this, there are already relatively few alliances mining it (GSF mainly) and they control the price. Making it more difficult for it to spread out will drive up its cost in the markets "far" from the miner's dumping location. Tech is not the only one distributed in this way, but it is the item currently being the most manipulated. There is a single Titanium moon in all of Caldari space and Titanium is the primary component in T2 Caldari components, which feeds into ships and modules.
Lastly, the distributions of ice and use of isotopes could restrict the type of starbase a particular region uses. This already has an impact, causing corporations and alliances to favor a particular tower type over the other due to local resources and not how they want to use the tower. Making it more difficult to move the isotopes around will drive corporations to use other towers.
I think that should CCP pursue low-sec between empires, it should evaluate redistributing moons and introduce a mechanism to use local ice to support any tower (possibly with more ice being needed). The goal is not to avoid the trade, but to make all resources available locally, but at different rates (like T1 minerals are currently). Trade should allow for undercutting local sources, but if you are cut-off still have the opportunity to rebuild.
