Nobody ever said that running a business was easy. However, it might seem like businesses in the hunting and target sports industries have faced more than their fair share of challenges in recent years.
We’re used to adversity in the firearms industry. Our work is conducted against a backdrop of near-constant external pressure from policymakers, the media, and anti-gun groups. In recent times, the manufacturers, distributors, wholesalers, and retailers of shooting and hunting products have had to face up to more acute difficulties.
After a pandemic, supply chain issues, multiple consumer confidence crises and several significant global conflicts, many businesses in our trade were hoping for a quiet, stable, and more predictable start to 2025. That hypothetical world was rocked by the 47th President of the United States, Donald Trump, as he began rolling out a series of global trade tariffs designed to help rebuild the country’s manufacturing industry and redress the balance of trade deals with other nations that he perceived to be unfair.
These metaphorical headwinds behaved much like the real thing in the first quarter of 2025, blowing one way then another with tariffs being imposed, then paused, then changed, then imposed again. Navigating this storm has been demanding for everyone, but as Albert Einstein once quipped: “In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.”
The shooting, hunting, and outdoor industries are resilient by nature – so, how are we coping? To find out, we spoke to two well-positioned global experts to give us a unique insight into Trump’s tariffs and what they mean for hunting and shooting companies.
Keep Calm and Carry On
“[How tariffs are affecting the global shooting industry] is a wide-ranging question and difficult to answer in just a few sentences, but one thing is clear: an increase in tariffs between nations is certainly not conducive to good business,” says Rob Smith, Editor of global business-to-business magazine Gun Trade World.