Awaiting DJI drone ban, US pols look to jack tariffs 30%

US politicians behind legislation seeking to effectively ban operation of DJI and other leading China-made drones are biding the time to its possible passage by trotting out an additional protectionist bill – this one designed to force the prices consumers pay for those UAVs to spike.

The new text was announced by MAGA maven Congressperson Elise Stefanik, and calls for a 30% increase in tariffs already imposed on drones imported to the US from China – a tax currently levied at 25% of a craft’s value. That additional jolt would rise by a 5% each year to obtain what Stefanik and other members of the cadre of national and state politicians often admit are their objectives to support uncompetitive American manufacturers.

Stefanik is also a major force behind the Countering CCP Drones Act, which seeks to prevent public, enterprise, and individual owners of DJI UAVs from operating the craft in the US. It would do so by preventing them from using Federal Communications Commission transmission assets that virtually all pilots rely on for navigational interfaces and data transmission. 

Awaiting what they hope will soon be a House of Representatives vote on that de facto ban of DJI and Autel craft from US skies, Stefanik and her fellow US drone lobby proxies are now looking to price them out of reach of buyers through augmented tariffs. The goal behind both texts is identical: sideline the most popular producers of UAVs in the nation and world; and in doing so fabricate an advantage to American rivals that produce less effective gear at higher prices that – not insanely – consumers buy in far lower numbers.

This time Stefanik goes a bit farther in that protectionist logic – and strikingly dishonest presentation of it – by naming the tariff-boosting bill the Drones for First Responders (DFR) Act. 

The title is especially hypocritical – if not disgusting – in claiming to defend essential, often heroic public sector UAV operators. Yet it has been precisely those first responder officials who have most tirelessly and vociferously denounced previous federal and state initiatives to remove DJI craft from their fleets on purely political and commercial grounds. 

Doing so, they argue, would force them to buy more expensive – and therefore fewer – US-made craft, whose tech are weaker and less reliable in their urgent work of saving human lives.

Stefanik has an answer for that, but it’s one first responders, taxpayers, and the ghost of her free-market idol Ronald Reagan would hate: adding unabashed, competition-deforming public subsidy programs for flailing companies to the higher costs artificially her bill would generate. She’d do so by “establishing a revenue neutral grant program to help Americans purchase drones securely made by the US and our allies.”

In other words, she wants to spend public money to convince “responders, critical infrastructure providers, and farmers and ranchers to purchase secure drones that are manufactured and assembled in the US” when her tariffs increases make DJI craft they want too expensive to buy. Or, as Stefanik’s other bill aims, technically impossible to fly in the supposed land of the free.

The New York far-right conservative congressperson is backed by the US drone lobby in her efforts, as well as several legislators whose own protectionist UAV initiatives have laid bare their utter ignorance of the sector and its tech. Those include West Virginia Representative Rob Wittman, who was most recently seen trying to engineer ways to use US military aid to Kyiv to force DJI drones critical to the nation’s defense from Ukraine fleets.

Claims by blacklisting militants that DJI drones leak user data to Chinese government servers has never been substantiated by evidence. The company has repeatedly denied the charges, and noted its craft can be configured not to transmit information while operating. It has recently opened an online Trust Center to document and aid security steps customers can take.

Those demonstrations have clearly been in vain, however, since security has never been an issue in the push; propping up under-performing US drone makers is. 

Now Stefanik and Co. look to do that by making DJI and Autel UAVs too expensive for you to buy; eventually prevent you from flying them in the US; then use your tax money to lure operators into purchasing domestic options you haven’t been sold on before – and all in your name, since these elected officials work for you.