It's great to have a trade pact with someone, however, how do we communicate with these people in other legions to talk about trades?

I can only see how to send them things, but that's all good, without chatting with them first to discuss what to send. Under diplomacy, I can see whoi we have agreements with, I can look up their ship names, but I cannot click on their ships to chat with any of them

Besides the legion leader being able to communicate with the other legion, I see no way for me as a legion member to communicate with the other legion to discuss a trade, unless one of them appears on my battle tab (highly unlikely and random) or unless I find one of them in the forums.

Surely there should be an ingame way of chatting with people we have trade agreements with, so we can arrange trades???

I agree with this it would be nice to be able to ask for things from your trade partners.