President Donald Trump’s administration has put a blanket pause on most exports, but firearms companies are probably going to suffer more than others.
Starting February 5th, the Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) stopped processing new export licenses. That impacts all gun exports to all countries. BIS gave no warning that the pause would happen and has offered no explanation or justification for it.
The freeze comes just months after the end of a previous pause implemented by former President Joe Biden in the last year of his term.
Now, this appears to be another example of the Trump Administration not prioritizing the desires of gun-rights advocates rather than an actively hostile move intended to hurt the gun industry. The export license freeze doesn’t just apply to guns but a wide swath of other commercial products. It appears to be driven by the administration’s broader trade policy goals–specifically, an effort to ensure other countries aren’t using unspecified loopholes to bring in American products Trump and his advisors don’t want them to have.
So, Trump isn’t necessarily doing this because he dislikes or distrusts the gun industry–as was often the case with Joe Biden. Instead, it’s more that he prioritizes other interests above them, and he doesn’t appear to be overly concerned if the fallout from actions taken to forward those interests lands on the gun industry.
Of course, the intentions of the Trump Administration will likely bring little comfort for firearms exporters impacted by the freeze. It has only been a few months since the Biden Administration lifted its pause on some gun exports to certain countries amidst a tightening of export rules. Now, those exporters are having their businesses thrown back into limbo, but to an even greater extent.
“The current ‘pause’ is for ALL export licenses. It goes beyond the 90-day pause. Now, this current pause is to ALL countries, NATO, Wassenaar, etc,” Larry Keane, general counsel for the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), told The Reload. “It is worse.”
It’s unclear exactly what the state of the export licensing freeze is at the moment. Johanna Reeves, an export lawyer with lengthy experience, said BIS may have rolled back restrictions on some countries. However, NSSF said it’s still in full effect as far as the industry group is aware.
“I have not seen anything in writing, and nobody else has either because there’s no publication,” Reeves told The Reload. “It’s all been word of mouth.”
Either way, it likely remains much broader than the Biden pause. That action, which was supposed to last 90 days but dragged on longer than that, only applied to certain kinds of guns–like AR-15s–exported to certain countries. The Biden Administration lifted it after finalizing new permanent rules for those kinds of transactions.
This action, even if BIS has winnowed it down to only apply to certain countries, still applies to all guns being sent out. And there’s no clear end in sight, especially since nobody is sure why the pause is even happening this time around.
That’s really bad news for any business hoping to figure out how to weather this particular storm.
“You don’t have a sale without a license,” Jordan Young, owner of Global Defense, told The Reload back during the Biden pause. “You can have the money, you can have the guns, you can have everything in place. But, if you don’t have a license, you don’t have a sale.”
He argued pausing licensing back then was unnecessary–an argument that remains relevant today.
“We vet everyone before we even take a license to the Commerce Department. It’s not like I deal with everyone off the street,” Young said in 2024. “Our guns are going to licensed importers and distributors in those countries. They have to have licensing, and they have to follow the rules of their country.”
This all comes as gun-rights activists had been celebrating the potential of Trump’s executive order creating a review of executive branch gun policy. While he didn’t fulfill his promise to roll back Biden’s numerous gun actions within his first week in office, and he’s moved at a slower pace on guns than most other issues, his order did highlight most of the key areas gun-right activists have wanted work on. The administration hasn’t taken any significant action yet, but the order will likely lead to at least some developments that make gun owners happy.
The undoing of Biden’s federal rules is one of the prime opportunities for reform. That includes the pistol-brace ban and the ghost-gun ban. But it also includes those export rules Biden implemented last year. In fact, Reeves said there are rumors that’s exactly what will happen at the end of the day.
“Word has come down that everything that Commerce put in place regarding firearms and ammunition is going to be reversed,” she said. “This is only word of mouth. So, I haven’t seen anything.”
Gun rights don’t need to be a top priority of the Trump Administration for it to do things gun-rights advocates approve of. By virtue of pulling staff from the more pro-gun of the two parties alone, this administration is much more likely to install pro-gun officials and make pro-gun reforms. So, it’s possible this action is just a temporary setback on the way to a more permanent situation gun exporters will like.
However, it’s impossible to say for sure. What we know right now is that BIS isn’t issuing gun export licenses, and there’s no way to know when they might get going again. For businesses hit with multiple work stoppages in the past year alone and the long-term uncertainty that brings, it is very bad news that only worsens the longer the situation drags on.
