American consumers deserve the best. Cronyism, protectionism and other distortions to free markets inevitably hurt end users of products. Congress is in the business of cronyism and working hard to create laws that will end up hurting consumers while helping donor friends in the private sector. Congress should pay more attention to the needs of consumers at a time when average Americans are being hammered with high gas prices, inflation and high taxes.
A recent example of cronyism is the battle over banning TikTok. As Donald Trump pointed out on Truth Social, "Crooked Joe Biden is responsible for banning TikTok. He is the one pushing it to close, and doing it to help his friends over at Facebook become richer and more dominant." He is right that banning TikTok is an act of cronyism towards Facebook because Facebook has an app called Reels that is very similar to TikTok and Reels would pick up TikTok refugees. The situation with DJI is similar because American drone makers will benefit if DJI drones are banned.
Right now, Congress is considering a bill titled the “Countering CCP Drones Act” that would ban the most popular drone for American hobbyists, first responders, police and small businesses. The title of the bill makes these drones sound dangerous, yet it would be more dangerous for Americans in harms way to have these tools of first responders banned in America. It also is using fear mongering to pass legislation that is protectionism for expensive and inferior quality drones. DJI drones pose no danger to American national security.
The legislation, H.R. 2864, requires the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to add DJI to a list of companies that “are deemed to pose an unacceptable risk to the national security of the United States” despite the fact the company poses no risk. If the company is added to this list, the FCC could no longer approve new equipment authorizations for products or software in the U.S. and new authorizations would be revoked. The impact would be that no sales of DJI drones could happen in the U.S. and currently used ones likely would be grounded. One odd provision would put American made software used to operate DJI drones to the list.
The Agency could also create a process to revoke existing authorizations. This means that no new DJI products could be approved in the U.S. going forward, and the DJI drones currently approved for U.S. use may be grounded in the future. The Act would also add any software capable of operating on DJI products to the Covered List, including software produced by U.S. software developers, subjecting them to the same restrictions.
The legislation is nothing more than cronyism and a way for competitors to ban their chief rival. Cronyism is present in a free market where preferential regulation, tariffs and other government policies are implemented to favor special interests.
The more you hear about the company, the less scary they sound. DJI is a company that was founded at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology by Frank Wang and two friends. The company is privately held so the allegation that this company produces “CCP Drones” is ridiculous. The company is controlled by the founder, Frank Wang and he and his co-founders hold 96% of the voting rights and 72% of the company shares. No government entity of the Chinese, or U.S. government, sits on the board of the company nor does the government of China have any role in the management of DJI.
The reason why they are under attack is because they are successful. The world’s largest manufacturer of personal and professional drones is DJI. This is not a company manufacturing military drones, the company was the one to expand a consumer drone market worldwide. They are loved by first responders and have been in use by many different government officials over the past few years.
In my home state of Iowa, the Decorah Fire Department used a DJI drone to find and rescue three stranded kayakers back in 2017. The Iowa State Patrol uses DJI drones to investigate crime and accident scenes. According to a DJI economic study, banning DJI drones would impact over five thousand Iowa jobs, $1 billion in economic activity and reduce state taxes collected by about $161 million. The national impact is estimated to be well over $100 billion with almost one half million jobs lost. This seems like a terrible piece of legislation when the economic impact is taken into account.
Congress should not continue down the road of banning everything that originated in China, because it will have significant impact on the American economy and consumers.