Merchant

From EU2Wiki

Merchants are a kind of state agent that may be sent to centers of trade to attempt to secure slots there, and thus obtain a fraction of the trade value for the owning country.

Normal merchant generation happens at the start of each month: a country will either gain no merchant that month, or it will gain one. If you hover over the merchant icon at the top of the screen, you'll get a tooltip showing the yearly number of merchants you get, and the breakdown according to the following factors:

N	Factor	Exact value
+1	Coastal province(s)
+1 to +3	Protestant coastal provinces	+1 for each, up to a maximum of 3
+2 to -2	Mercantilism domestic policy	+2 - 0.4*mercantilism
+1 or +2	high trade tech	+1 if trade tech is 5 to 9; +2 at trade tech 10
+1/CoT	CoTs owned	+1 per COT owned
+1/monopoly	Monopolies	+1 per monopoly you have

There is a maximum rate of 12 merchants/year (1 per month).

It is also possible to gain merchants via events. A few countries have scripted events which give them merchants. There is also the "Rush of Merchants" random event and several others that give merchants in random events.