Richard Baldwin
Economist, Authority on Globalisation, Trade Fragmentation & the New Geography of Work
Richard Baldwin is best known for explaining globalisation as a technology-driven process and for showing why that process is now being re-engineered.
An economist and leading authority on international trade, Baldwin examines how digital connectivity, automation, and geopolitics have reshaped where work is done, how value is created, and which countries capture it. His work reminds leaders that globalisation was never static: first driven by transport, then by communication, and now by intelligence embedded in machines and platforms.
As supply chains shorten, services unbundle, and political risk reasserts itself, Baldwin explains why we are not entering a post-global world but a different one. His insight helps leaders understand how localisation, remote work, and trade fragmentation fit into a single structural shift, rather than a series of disconnected shocks.
Signature Keynotes
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Why trade is changing shape, not disappearing.
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How digital tools rewire work and trade.
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Understanding today’s economic reordering.
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Who gains and why.
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Leading when rules are in flux.
The Baldwin Effect
Globalisation is understood as a technological system.
Leaders leave able to:
See trade and localisation as outcomes of technology, not ideology
Understand how digital tools are reshaping where work happens
Anticipate fragmentation without assuming collapse
Read supply chains, services, and labour through the same lens
Make strategic decisions grounded in structural change
Why Book Richard
Richard Baldwin brings rare clarity to one of the most misunderstood transitions of our time. His thinking is trusted by governments, institutions, and global businesses navigating trade disruption, reshoring, and the digital unbundling of work where assumptions built for the 1990s no longer apply.
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