If Global Trade Breaks, It’s Worse Than 2008 | Ed Conway

About this episode

What happens if the invisible system feeding and fuelling our planet suddenly breaks down? In this episode of The Master Investor Podcast, Wilfred Frost sits down with Ed Conway, Economics & Data Editor at Sky News and bestselling author of Material World and Trade World. Drawing on Ed’s latest book, Trade World, they explore the enormous importance - and growing fragility - of global trade, and why the hyper-efficient, just-in-time supply chains that have delivered decades of cheap goods are increasingly vulnerable to tariffs, geopolitical friction and war.  Ed offers some stark warnings about what could happen if the global trading system begins to break down: “So if we were to have a kind of breakdown in global trading system, God forbid, it would make the Global Financial Crisis look like a walk in the park because this is everything.” And, looking at the growing tensions between major powers: “It's not implausible that if things go south from here, people will look back and say this was the foothills for another world war.” At the same time, the fact that the stakes are so high and the world is so integrated encourages him that the cost of escalating conflicts an