No, I do not think you are vote trading. I think you have a network of people who support you. They support you for a variety of reasons, including many of the good things you have done for Steem.
Just like many others have a network of people who they have worked with, agreed with, shared the same type of content with or have other connections.
Exactly, that's why I said there are a number of people I curate cause I value their work and they do the same towards me. The difference comes when those users doing the voting back and forth are of the same size in "influence" or share the same votes in rshares no matter the post or content on a daily basis. For sure it's not going to be easy to judge it case by case and downvote an appropriate amount but if they have been able to take all the upvotes in all these years they should be able to accept a few downvotes without crying about it as well, you know, like you and me have since #newsteem.