Shielded by mountains and dense forest, the ammunition makers of Gorazde in eastern Bosnia survived the Balkan wars of the early 1990s, pumping out bullets and shells that helped their new country fend off attack from Serbia.
Three decades later, they face a new menace: the scattershot tariffs announced by President Trump in early April.
The United States’ appetite for guns has long provided a steady market for Gorazde’s main industry — the weapons factories built when Bosnia was part of Yugoslavia, a multiethnic communist state that imploded into war in 1991.
Now, the tariffs announced by Mr. Trump for almost all of the United States’ trading partners — including tiny Bosnia — have reverberated around Gorazde.
Ginex, a local company that makes ignition devices used in ammunition, known as primers, has stalled expansion plans as it figures out what the tariff will be on its exports to the United States. Will it be 35 percent, as initially announced by Mr. Trump on April 2? A temporary revised rate of 10 percent announced a week later? Or something else?
“It would stop all our exports,” said Demir Imamovic, Ginex’s marketing manager, referring to the initial tariff hike. Even the revised rate of 10 percent — more than double the previous rate — risks scaring off American customers, he said.
