Global trade and global supply chains

In this episode I am delighted to have with me Ed Conway to discuss his new book 'Trade World'. Ed is the economics editor of Sky News and in 2023 he published his first booked 'Material World' which looked at some of the key raw materials - salt, copper, iron, oil etc on which our modern world depends. In his new book he looks at the origins, the structure and organisation of the international trade system which our modern world depends on. Many of the products we consume today are not produced in our own countries but imported from overseas. we get many of our fruit and vegetables from southern Europe and our clothes from half way around the world. The T shirt I am wearing is from Nicaragua, but it could have come from Vietnam or Bangladesh or Turkey. Ed looks in his book at the history of supply chains, going back to Greek and Roman Times and the complex web of trade across the Mediterranean and the developments during the Dutch and British empires. He focuses on three key examples in his book, bread, clothing and cars. We should not be surprised by cars, as many of us are used to cars from Germany, Italy, France, Korea and Japan, but now they are also coming from China and Malaysia. Bread is more of a surprise but ,much of the wheat used in its manufacture now comes from North america. But, as he notes we are facing a big change at present. The current era of globalization which got under way in the post war era with the off shoring of production, particularly to SE Asia, is now under threat. People used to argue that we were seeing the 'end of geography'. We could get anything we wanted from anywhere. But Ed suggests we may now be seeing the Return of Geography' with countries and companies re-shoring production and looking at the risks of being dependent on key goods produced abroad. This is why the British government have just intervened to ensure the continuation of steel production in Britain. Can a modern country risk being completely dependent on steel produced overseas? What if the tap is turned off at a time of conflict? Increasingly, countries are thinking about the need to maintain the production of key items within national borders.