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

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 and diminishing trade would far outweigh the upside for world leaders. He also unpacks the ingenuity of trade middlemen who have ensured a resilience to world trade such that while oil prices have risen this year, they haven’t risen as much as worst estimates.

“Trade doesn't just stop when a trade barrier is put in place. It adapts and it evolves - it’s like water - it’s very difficult to stop it from finding a level.”

They also explore why established industries so often push back against new technologies and innovation; the extraordinary moment in history when technological progress delivered an even greater economic transformation than AI; and why global yields have reached multi-decade highs, how hedge funds are driving the gilt market, and the mechanics behind ending QT.

#EdConway ’s new book, Trade World, is available now in the UK and will be released in the US next May.

0:00 Intro

3:21 Why high bond yields?

8:08 QT arrives in UK

13:55 TRADE WORLD

20:03 Wool & Cotton – AI of their day

24:25 Opposition to innovation

30:56 Cotton – greater exponential growth than AI

37:10 Russia biggest exporter of grains

40:00 Protectionism not new

46:39 Fragile or Resilient global economy?

51:48 Recession chances

54:06 Foothills of WW3?

59:30 Wonders of world trade

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