Yea, you brought up the biggest reason to keep them.
But in the same respect, removing trades can be a great way of testing ways of improving SE, remember TE is also a SE testing ground.
I think the hassle to set up trades (and pray you get a decent set) is not worth it, but that trying a round without them, if admin looks at these threads and if he can do the coding in that manner (may be too entangled in the game) it's worth a shot.