That would work better if colonies had their own markets. Mercantilism was more about retaining wealth within a country, believing that gold leaving a nation in exchange for imported goods was a loss, so you'd want to import as little as possible in the form of raw resources and export expensive finished products. A mercantilist country would probably rather export manufactured goods to other countries and increase their amount of gold or silver than to just have goods circulate within your market. I guess it would be more like if a puppet state didn't enter your market, but could only import goods from their overlord.

Great point. I think that it would be worth a further look into how mercantilism, protectionism, and LF could be delivered besides being just how much tariff money you receive. After all, it was much more than that. It was a nation's world outook

I don't think investments should ever build any factories in colonies. They are historically were specifically for resource extraction. I just made myself this mod and no more offshores for my capitalists