>> Continued From the Previous Page <<
“When it was evident that Donald Trump was going to be elected president, we said, ‘You know what, he’s been very, very vocal about tariffs, this is probably a good time for us to start the process of moving the supply chain back on-shore,'” Ganz told Fox Business.
That was not political theater. It was a business decision rooted in risk management and long-term strategy.
Ganz shut down the South African ammunition plant and launched a new facility in Fort Wayne, Indiana. The new ammunition operation sits just five miles from Byrna’s launcher factory, effectively consolidating production on American soil.
The transformation has been dramatic. Byrna once reported that roughly one-third of its product content was manufactured in the United States. Today, that number has surged to 92%. Even more striking, 100% of the company’s ammunition is now produced domestically.
Critics of reshoring often focus on one issue: cost. And Ganz does not deny that the transition brought some increases in direct expenses. Labor and operational inputs in the United States can be higher than in certain foreign markets.
But that is only part of the equation.
When supply chains stretch across continents, small problems become major disruptions. Shipping delays, ocean freight backlogs, customs complications, and quality control issues can take weeks to resolve.
Ganz explained the advantage in simple terms.
“When you’re supplying componentry from offshore, you either have air freight costs, you have lengthy ocean voyages – when you’re supplying it from a hundred miles away by truck, you can be much more responsive to changes in consumer demand,” Ganz told Fox Business.
Instead of booking international flights to inspect overseas production, company leaders can drive to a facility minutes away. Instead of waiting on containers crossing oceans, they can load trucks and respond to market shifts in real time.
The financial impact has been surprisingly modest. Before the reshoring effort, Byrna’s margins hovered around 62%. After the transition, they settled between 60.5% and 61%.
That is not a collapse. It is stability.
For a company whose products are used in life-or-death situations, quality control carries more weight than shaving a fraction of a percentage point in margin.
Trump’s tariff strategy also delivered another unexpected benefit. According to Ganz, Chinese competitors had been flooding the market with lower-cost knockoffs, sometimes selling below Byrna’s own manufacturing cost.
The tariff regime changed that equation.
“People’s lives are at stake when they use our device,” Ganz told Fox News Digital. “I’m not sure why people would buy a cheap product when it comes to saving their lives.”
Byrna reports that its products have been deployed more than 5,000 times to stop crimes, including carjackings, assaults, and home invasions. That is not a novelty item. It is a defensive tool.
And now, foreign competitors no longer enjoy the same price advantage.
While much of the national media has painted tariffs as destructive and chaotic, Byrna’s Fort Wayne expansion tells a different story. The company more than doubled its U.S. workforce during the reshoring process, adding jobs that did not exist before the shift.
This was not a government bailout. It was not a subsidy program. It was a calculated decision by a private company responding to political signals and economic realities.
The narrative from the left has long been that American manufacturing is a relic of the past. They argued that once factories left, they were gone for good.
An Indiana CEO just proved that assumption wrong.
By anticipating policy changes, accepting modest cost adjustments, and prioritizing control over its supply chain, Byrna Technologies demonstrated that reshoring is not just possible. Under the right conditions, it can be practical, competitive, and profitable.
For communities like Fort Wayne, that is more than theory.
It is paychecks, stability, and a factory floor that hums with American labor once again.
