James R. Ferry II / Trade Underground

I've spent 25 years inside the machine — not watching it from a law firm window, but working the audit rooms, the detention holds, and the enforcement cases that don't make the press releases.

I'm a Certified Customs Specialist (CCS), Certified Export Specialist (CES), and Certificate International Trade (CIT). I founded Ferry Trade Group, a Denver-based customs and trade compliance advisory, and I serve on the board of the World Trade Center Denver. My analysis has appeared in the Journal of Commerce.

Everything in this store is what I wish had existed when I was building compliance programs from scratch — not theory, not checklists lifted from the Federal Register, but operational frameworks you can open on Monday morning and actually use.

The Books: The Trade Underground is the insider account of how enforcement actually works. The Tariff Engineers is the tactical field manual for importers who want to turn customs, sourcing, and red tape into margin. Border Certainty is the executive guide for VPs and GCs who carry the risk but rarely see the machinery. The Accidental Importer is where first-time importers start. The Quantitative Shield is the Transaction Risk Score framework for export compliance analysts working dual-use electronics. Mud, Ice & Iron is the story of the physical infrastructure global trade runs on — and the margin of safety we threw away. Foreign Countries Don't Pay Tariffs. You Do. explains plainly who actually pays when trade wars hit.

The Tools: The Virtual C-TPAT Playbook and entity scorecards give asset-light importers, 3PLs, and foreign manufacturers the exact compliance architecture CBP is looking for — without a $50,000 consultant.

Everything here is built to the standard I hold in client work: specific, defensible, and ready when CBP shows up.

james@tradeunderground.com · ferrytrade.com · tradeunderground.com