When President Trump upended global trade in his first term by placing tariffs on goods from China, many companies decided to move production elsewhere to avoid the duties.

For one company in Germany, that decision has come back to haunt it.

In 2022, Bizerba, a German maker of industrial scales and slicers with customers around the globe, including the U.S. sandwich chain Subway, broke ground on a factory in Serbia. The strategy was to produce more parts and machines for the U.S. market there, to escape a 25 percent tariff that Mr. Trump had placed on goods made in China.

However, just as the plant became operational this year, Mr. Trump imposed a 35 percent tariff on goods made in Serbia. Now Bizerba is contemplating whether it should move some production to the United States.

“We are now almost at the point where it makes sense to produce certain products directly in the U.S., instead of trying to find new workarounds,” said Andreas W. Kraut, who leads the fifth-generation family-owned company.

Bizerba already ships some parts of the industrial scales and slicers it makes to the United States to be assembled locally for its customers there, which include Subway’s nationwide franchises. Like many companies around the globe, Bizerba is faced with either paying the added import taxes or building production lines in the United States and creating a supply chain to support them.