The consulate option for increasing export income at the expense of normal resources is quite weak at the moment. By reducing your villagers gather rate by 5%, you gain 35% more export. By reducing your villager gather rate by 10% you gather 65% more export. However, the base gather rate is so low that either options will greatly reduce your overall resource income.
Villagers gather export at 0.03/s. By using the 400 export consulate armies as a benchmark, every piece of export is equal to 1.5 resources. A 35% increase in export gather rate equals 0.030.35= 0.0105 i.e. roughly 0.015 resources per second. The negative gathering speed for normal resources is 5%. Calculating the resource loss for the slowest gathered resource (wood), we arrive at a loss of 0.50.05=0.025. This is 66% more than the value of the extra export gathered. Taking food and/or gold into account, the opportunity cost is even higher. The other option of gaining 65% export increase for 10% resource malus is even worse, as it gives less than twice the export bonus at twice the loss of normal resources. Even if you use the grenadier army from the french consulate which gives 1.7 export resource value (720 ress for 400 export), both of the export rate options still reduce your overall resource production.
I propose that the export gather rate options will be changed to the following:
-5% resource gather rate and +50% export gather rate
-10% resource gather rate and +100% export gather rate
The reason why I chose 50/100% as an export boost is that it is close to the resource value lost when gathering wood. Wood gather rate is 0.50/s, which makes the loss 0.50.05= 0.025. 50% more export is worth 0.030.5=0.015 export/s =~ 0.0225 ress/s. This is only 10% lower than the wood gathering rate. 100% more export for -10% resources gives you more export for less resources, but at the same rate as the +50% option. However, the food, wood and gold will not deplete at the same speed as normal. This means that all of your resources will last longer. The choice of getting more export but less resources can be used if you know that you will run out of resources quickly, even though your gather rate is lower.