Another Chinese company may face a ban in the U.S., with the House of Representatives passing a ban on the sale of DJI drones within the country. While the legislation still has to be voted on in the Senate, this does mean that a DJI drone sales ban is now a lot more likely.
DJI currently controls around 70% of the global drone market share, and around 6% of the company’s stock is owned by Chinese state-owned businesses. Like other China-based products and services, this has lawmakers fearful of DJI drones having secret backdoors that would allow Chinese government surveillance or pose a risk to national security.
Plus, being a large Chinese company, any kind of success DJI has in the U.S. would result in consumers directly helping to boost the Chinese economy — rather than an American drone business.
The potential ban comes in the form of the “Countering CCP Drones Act'', which is part of the 2025 National Defense Authorization Act. That bill allocates defense spending for the next year and has passed through the House without issue. As reported by Tom's Hardware, now the Senate has to pass its own version of the bill, and if successful they’ll be merged and passed onto the White House for President Biden to sign into law.
DJI drone ban: What happens next?
As it stands the bill wouldn’t affect DJI drones that have already been purchased in the U.S. But it would prohibit the continued sale of DJI products in the country. Considering DJI dominates our list of the best drones, a total sales ban would seriously reduce the number of available drones.
DJI also sells action cams, gimbals and other camera-centric products DJI. They may not be drones but they could still get caught in the crossfire.
The ban isn’t a done deal yet, though. There’s a chance the Countering CCP Drones Act could be removed from the 2015 NDAA before it passes, though that will rely on senators actively doing something about it. So if you have very strong feelings about keeping DJI drones on sale, you could contact your senator and make your feelings very clear.
Should the ban pass through the Senate as well, there may still be a transition period that could potentially last 3 or more years. This would allow for adjustments to the ban before it fully takes effect, and may even give DJI the chance to sell off some portion of its drone business to a non-Chinese entity.
We will keep you up to date as the potential DJI ban situation develops.
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