AND, Clinton's Executive Order halting all imports of Chinese Small Arms & Ammo hadn't gone into effect yet. Ammo prices were as good as I've ever seen, probably better than I'll ever see again, even corrected for inflation.
You could get U.S. new commercial 9mm ammo in small quantities (i.e. a box or two--50 to 100 round quantities) for under 10 cents a round without shopping around that carefully, and buying in bulk, you could do better. 7.62x39mm was cheaper than that, and 7.62x25mm pistol ammo was down around 5 cents a round in bulk.
If that executive order is ever rescinded, the prices will drop like a stone when Norinco starts hitting the market again.
Why would you assume that?
Throughout the 90's and early 2000's we had many ex-Warsaw Pact countries joining NATO and standardizing ammunition.
It's no coincidence that Bulgaria, Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania, and now parts of the old Yugoslavia are all the primary sources of our surplus. We had, for 20 years, almost a constant supply of parts kits, "obsolete" ammunition, and so on getting sold off and bought by voracious hoarders in the US
as those countries standardized and adopted NATO doctrine.
We also saw surplus old stock entering the country from Malaysia, India, and other eastern countries.
There's plenty of competition for ammunition from various sources; ranging from parts of the old old Soviet Union (Wolf, Brown/Silver Bear, Tula, etc), Czech Republic (Privi Partizan), Switzerland/Germany (Ruag), FN Herstal, and so on.
Plus dozens of commercial manufacturers right here in the United States.
There's no shortage of ammunition suppliers.
There's no shortage of metals. And metal prices aren't much different than they were 10 or 15 years ago.
So ... why is ammunition 3x as expensive as it used to be, and rising?