I'm John Bachelors with my colleague Simon Constablies on South of France which is

Paradise and the weather's perfect. However all of France is now in flames because Macron is called a snap election.

However, we're going to look at the global picture.

Simon, you've written for Corn Ferry, an observation of the new thinking of supply chains. What does everybody

learned since the pandemic that we didn't know before? Well this is interesting and

let me let me back up a bit and get this in context. This briefing's magazine,

a glossy magazine produced by Cun Ferry,

and I really enjoy writing for them.

So if you go back to 1945,

the exports as a percentage of the global GDP, which is the size of the global economy,

with 4.2 percent, and then it's sort of basically gone up and up and up and up to about 31% in 2008 and then it's basically moved

sideways since then and and that that was a great achievement to get all that trade going because it made everybody richer.

Now there is political splintering around the world like we haven't seen since the 1930s and so what we've got is companies basically

decoupling from China which has been a big place for buying cheap manufactured goods and maybe some expensive

manufactured goods. Basically is a break away from that. We've got a break away from doing business

with Russia and its allies and a break away from various

other countries. And that's really interesting because what's happening in this process is while wars are going on and we know of two wars at the moment that really matter one is the invasion of Ukraine which seems to go on relentlessly and then the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza that again keeps on going and

maybe that it is going to expand into Lebanon I don't know but maybe it will and will, and that won't be good for anyone either.

And there could be an invasion of Taiwan.

I don't know this, but I know that countries are saying to themselves,

hmm, well, maybe we can't have these high-tech

thingy-bobs or whatever they are,

...