GoKawiilis a senior editor and founding member of The Verge who covers gadgets, games, and toys. He spent 15 years editing the likes of CNET, Gizmodo, and Engadget.
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DJI ban: how the world’s biggest dronemaker is getting shoved out of the US
The United States has already banned future foreign drones from entering the United States unless their companies kiss the ring — as well as routers, robots, and Roombas. Now, President Donald Trump is targeting existing drone imports and parts, too. He’s going to try to make them cost a lot more.
In a presidential action, he’s declared a whopping 100 percent tariff on imports of drones with thermal cameras, drones weighing over 25kg (57 pounds), and any kind of part for any kind of unmanned aircraft weighing over 25kg — you can read the full list here. For all other drones, including tiny sub-250-gram “Mini” consumer drones, he’s declared a 25 percent tariff.
In Trump fashion, these tariffs have a huge loophole: if a company commits to making some of their drones or aircraft parts in the United States, they don’t have to pay tariffs. Trump suggested he’d make similar deals when he threatened a 100 percent tariff on computer chips last year.
And Trump is giving the EU, Japan, Liechtenstein, South Korea, Switzerland, and Taiwan a lower rate of 15 percent, and a rate of 10 percent for the UK, “provided that substantially all hardware, software, and technology originates from within these countries and the United States.”
Stated reasons for the new tariffs include:
“many U.S. commercial manufacturers that produce UAS domestically are highly dependent on foreign sources for critical UAS components, such as motors, electronic speed controllers, lithium-ion batteries, and docking stations, which creates unacceptable national security vulnerabilities.”
“products pose an information technology security risk because their software allows data to be sent back to the manufacturer in a foreign country.”
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