Forget about AI: America is about to be the world leader in socks and underwear 
James Hickman

Governments love to tell you tariffs are about “protection”. But protection from what? More affordable goods? A higher quality of life?

In today’s podcast, we dig into the many, many unforeseen consequences of the new tariff policies. For example:

• Examples from countries where I’ve lived which have heavy tariffs and import duties— and how those countries are vastly worse off as a result. Their citizens are poorer and less prosperous. That’s because taxing something always leads to less of it… which ultimately means a decline in standards of living. Hooray tariffs!!
  
  
• They just slapped some of the highest tariffs on products the US doesn’t even make— like socks from Vietnam or underwear from Bangladesh. Do they really want America to be a ‘socks and underwear economy’? Is this really the future of economic growth?
  
  
• And even if so, where are they going to get the workers to staff those factories? Are America’s 20-year olds, who, heretofore have been posting butt-selfies on Instagram for a living, really going to put down their iPhones to go work in factories making socks and underwear?
  
  
• Plus there are painfully obvious reasons why American-made goods will become more expensive… due to tariffs on raw materials.
  
  
• We can’t imagine how big the customs bureaucracy will become to enforce tariffs… let alone the complexity and confusion, when, say, a Swiss-owned vessel sailing under a Panamanian flag crewed by Danes and Filipinos carries chromite from Zimbabwe, granite from Mozambique, and graphite from Tanzania into a US port…
  
  
• And then there’s the golden opportunity that tariffs give China to assert global leadership. April 2, 2025 may be the date that future historians mark as the day American dominance ended.
  
  
• Why tariffs are just the first phase… and how this escalates from trade wars, to capital controls… loss of visa-free travel, cyber attacks, and more.

You can listen in here.

You can access the podcast transcript here.

Simon Black, as James Hickman is more commonly known, is the Founder of Sovereign Man. 

He is an international investor, entrepreneur, and a free man. His daily e-letter, Sovereign Letters, draws on his life, business and travel experiences to help readers gain more freedom, more opportunity, and more prosperity.

Hickman is a lifelong entrepreneur and investor that’s traveled to more than 120 countries on all seven continents. In addition, he’s started, invested in, or acquired businesses all over the world. 

He is a graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point and served in the US Army as an intelligence officer during Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Hickman founded a South America-based agriculture company that has become one of the leading producers in its industry. A few years ago, he acquired a prominent retail brand in Australia, purchasing the business from the former 1980s era rock star who founded it. 

His other business ventures have included starting a boutique, private investment bank that boasts some of the highest levels of liquidity and solvency in the world, and investing in companies from Colombia to Uzbekistan. He also serves on numerous Boards of Directors, and previously served as Chairman of company listed on a major stock exchange. 

Writing under the pen name Simon Black, he has also written extensively on business incorporation and tax residency establishment in Puerto Rico, and is a proponent of investing in gold and silver as a hedge against inflation.

He is a also a prolific writer on topics ranging from second residency and citizenship, Golden Visas and portfolio diversification, to estate and retirement planning, asset protection, tax optimization and US Opportunity Zones.

 

www.schiffsovereign.com