The Trade Federation has never been the most interesting or explicable part of the larger Star Wars canon. In The Phantom Menace, they mostly just exist to get tricked into sparking a galactic conflict, and by Revenge of the Sith this group of corrupt space capitalists is easily overshadowed by their fellow Separatists from the Techno Union, at least when it comes to silly Star Wars character design. For 25 years, the Trade Federation has been a strange and slightly embarrassing part of the Republic era of that faraway galaxy.
