The gathering known as the Eriadu Trade Summit, alternatively referred to as the Eriadu Conference, or more simply, the Eriadu Summit, was an assembly put forth by Senator Palpatine in 33 BBY. Its stated purpose was to bring together all parties impacted by Supreme Chancellor Finis Valorum's proposition. This proposition involved granting the Trade Federation increased latitude in permissible weaponry in return for the Galactic Senate's taxation of free-trade areas. Notably, the Nebula Front, a radical political faction vehemently opposed to the Trade Federation, was explicitly barred from attending. This exclusion, coupled with the Front's pre-existing unease and distrust of the Republic Senate, precipitated the first of two orchestrated "attempts" on Valorum's life by the Nebula Front's extremist leadership. The initial attempt occurred on Coruscant, with the second unfolding at the Summit itself. This highly publicized event took place on the planet Eriadu, a significant trading hub located in the Outer Rim.
However, the Trade Summit ultimately devolved into a calamitous affair. The majority of the Trade Federation Directorate—the actual target—was assassinated by their own security forces. This was a meticulously planned scheme masterminded by Darth Plagueis and Darth Sidious, who manipulated events to make the Nebula Front appear responsible for the killings. The summit failed to produce any agreement regarding the taxation of trade routes. Subsequently, Nute Gunray assumed leadership of the Trade Federation. In response to the Senate's subsequent decision to tax free-trade zones without any reciprocal agreement to benefit or protect the Federation, Gunray initiated a blockade of all trade to the planet Naboo.
Back in 33 BBY, the Trade Federation and its political allies intensified their pressure on Finis Valorum, who was serving as the Supreme Chancellor of the Galactic Republic, concerning his proposal to implement taxes on trade routes situated in the outer systems. To facilitate discussions about Valorum's proposed legislation, Palpatine, the senator representing Naboo, proposed holding a summit on the Outer Rim planet of Eriadu. This would provide a forum for the Trade Federation and its representatives to share their perspectives on the proposed legislation and engage in debates with their political adversaries. The summit was designed to serve as a platform for all relevant parties to voice their opinions on the taxation of outer trade routes. Consequently, any voting on the matter was deferred until the summit had concluded.
The summit itself was convened within Seswenna Hall located in Eriadu City. Among the organizations and governments extended invitations to the Summit were the Association of Free Trade Worlds, the Commerce Guild, the Corporate Alliance, the Hutts, the Rights of Sentience League, Senex sector, the Stark Veteran Assembly, the Techno Union, and, of course, the Trade Federation. While the Republic was represented by Valorum in person, numerous member worlds were granted the opportunity to send their own delegations, including Bothawui, Clak'dor VII, Falleen, Malastare, and Sullust. Despite its concerns regarding the Trade Federation, the Nebula Front was excluded from the invitation list. Valorum justified this decision by asserting that their presence would only lend them undue legitimacy.
The Nebula Front harbored concerns that the Trade Federation would shift the burden of increased taxation onto those who utilized their shipping services. Denied a voice at the trade summit, the Nebula Front's enigmatic leader, Eru Matalis—known to his allies as Havac (but who, as the Front's former Eriadu-cell leader, was secretly conscripted by Eriadu Lieutenant Governor Wilhuff Tarkin in league with higher and darker powers)—devised "plans" with the mercenary Captain Cohl to assassinate Valorum during the trade summit (a sinister decoy to the real target: the Federation Directorate). The Front's "official" intention, as disseminated by its extremist leader, Havac, was to avert the imposition of new taxation in the hope that the outer worlds could evade escalating shipping costs while the Front sustained its campaign of violence against the Trade Federation. A more moderate (and less violent) faction within the Front advocated for more temperate means of achieving its objectives.
Given that the Eriadu Summit essentially served as a meeting between the Republic and the Trade Federation, these organizations were represented by their respective leaders: the Supreme Chancellor and the Directorate. However, this proved to be a grave error. In an act orchestrated by Darth Sidious, security droids assassinated six of the seven Directorate members. Simultaneously, the Front's extremist leadership (the founder of its militant wing) created an illusion: Havac staged (for the second time in weeks) a falsely orchestrated "attempt" on the life of Valorum, to conjure in the Republic's mind an overwhelming bias not only for the suspected target, but also for the "obvious" culpability of the Nebula Front (that is, the conglomerate, seemingly united public face of its disparate factions). Ultimately, the Nebula Front was held accountable for all murderous attacks—both genuine and fabricated—that transpired at the Trade Summit.
Consequently, the Summit concluded prematurely, without any resolution. It constituted a significant public relations setback for both the Jedi who failed to prevent the attacks and for Valorum himself. Lieutenant Governor Tarkin, complicit in the murders—having arranged delivery to Seswenna Hall of the rogue "commander" droid that drove the killing rampage of the Federation's own "follower" droids—blocked (or irreparably stalled) all subsequent investigative attempts under the auspices of Eriaduan jurisdiction. The Senate unilaterally enacted its new taxation laws regardless, while simultaneously imposing restrictions on the Chancellor's authority over the Judicial Department and Jedi Order. The deaths of his hapless colleagues enabled Viceroy Nute Gunray to assume direct control of the Trade Federation and initiate a blockade of Naboo in retaliation against the Republic and Naboo's treacherous senator who had proposed, but failed to make good on, a summit to fairly consider Valorum's taxation proposal. Thus, the Summit's failure and the Senate's arbitrary action set the stage for the blockade and Battle of Naboo.
As a repercussionistic side note to this Trade Summit account, Palpatine—who made a brief Naboo stopover visit at the request of King Ars Veruna on his way to the Eriadu summit from Coruscant—had, by the time he reached Eriadu, already been apprised of the imminent Bando Gora-Gardulla-Black Sun-Veruna plot to kill Hego Damask (Palpatine's master, Darth Plagueis): the self-same nuclear bombardment of the Sojourn-moon that Palpatine himself had orchestrated, unbeknownst to his unwitting pawns (and clearly also to his own dark master). A drunken Veruna gloated amidst a banquet thrown for his dark accomplices (all of whom, it appeared to Palpatine, were in attendance) that the King was now, even as he spoke and the Trade Summit events unfurled, "ending" his partnership with both Damask and the Trade Federation—bragging that the senator need not bother about giving any sort of warning to his IBC associate, for Palpatine would not be seeing him again. Which is to say, that the nuclear run on Sojourn was being carried out at that very moment. But despite what were meant to be vitriolic, hurtful words at the senator's expense, Palpatine/Darth Sidious silently gloried in the sublime ignorance of everyone about him, quietly amused himself with the wholly painless jabs of his would-be injurers: the Naboo senator couldn't have been more delighted that a nuclear bomb was on its way to Sojourn, where his unsuspecting master was surely laboring diligently in his life-extension labs, busy in his quest for everlasting life through midi-chlorian manipulation. After all, it was Palpatine who, some time earlier, had ingeniously planted the seeds for such an attack in Veruna's mind, had quietly manipulated the King's thinking, to cause him to believe that he had engendered the idea himself.
It was only a short time later, amidst the rousing orchestral music that preceded the commencement of the Trade Summit event in Eriadu City's Seswenna Hall, that Naboo's senatorial delegate to the Galactic Republic mentioned to a small group of fellow senators also in attendance (one of whom had noticed Palpatine's rather pensive demeanor, a seeming preoccupation) that he'd just learned of King Veruna's sudden abdication of the throne. This gossip-inducing news—communicated to Palpatine by Damask himself, and which had occurred, the Muun said, immediately after Jabba the Hutt had delivered to the Naboo monarch the startling revelation of his bitter enemy's almost-miraculous survival of Sojourn's nuclear blast—defined a watershed event for the future of the galaxy (for it marked Amidala's rise to the throne and all that would flow from that seminal event). In the sequence of Eriadu events dealing with the Trade Federation controversy, Veruna's abdication was thus shown to follow on the heels of (for it was directly brought on by) the failed nuclear attempt on Damask's life. That the nuclear mission had been a failure accounts, perhaps, for Palpatine's pensive aspect, but otherwise things were developing precisely according to the senator's own interpretation—his personal galactic view—of the Grand Plan, and he was pleased.
The Eriadu Trade Summit was a key element in the 2001 novel titled Cloak of Deception, authored by James Luceno. Luceno referenced this event in his subsequent novels, Darth Plagueis and Labyrinth of Evil. Furthermore, the summit received mention in The New Essential Guide to Characters, The New Essential Chronology, The Official Starships & Vehicles Collection 33 and The Official Starships & Vehicles Collection 35.
The designation "Eriadu Trade Summit" originated on Wookieepedia and was later canonized, even though a non-conjectural title existed in the novel Maul: Lockdown, penned by Joe Schreiber, and released on January 28, 2014.