Drone Drama

I've had a lot of fun with my DJI Mini 4 Pro in the 5 months I've had it. I had been thinking of getting a drone for a while, and then after our new President made some threats on February 1 about putting big tariffs on Chinese imports, I decided to move quickly and ordered my drone from Adorama right away. As it turns out, I'm glad that little tariff tantrum on social media motivated me to dive into drones when I did, because as of this writing it is no longer possible to buy a DJI drone in the United States.

It's a complicated situation, and below I've tried to provide a simplified high-level history of how we got to this point. The short version:

• DJI is a Shenzhen, China-based technology company founded by Frank Wang in 2006. They have become the world's largest manufacturer of commercial and consumer-oriented drones, making over 90% of drones sold worldwide.
• Police in China's Xinjiang Autonomous Region have used DJI drones for surveillance of Uyghur citizens in the past. (It's not clear whether they're still doing so.) China's crackdown on the Uyghur people, which includes massive internment camps, forced sterilization, and other atrocities, has been condemned by every major human rights organization.
• DJI competitors in the United States have tried for years to get DJI products banned in the US, and the Uyghur issue has been seen as an opportunity by some. That probably sounds a bit cynical, but I've done a lot of reading on this issue and am convinced that the most vocal DJI critics in the US are not motivated by a genuine concern for human rights.
• After numerous seizures of DJI products by US Customs and Border Protection agents in the last year, DJI has decided to stop selling their drones in the US until there is more clarity regarding their status.

Use of DJI drones by Chinese police

In early 2020, Bloomberg reported that DJI's drones were being used by police in China's Xinjiang Autonomous Region to track and identify Uyghur people. China's persecution of the Uyghurs is considered a major human rights violation and has been widely condemned by the international community, so this was a blow to DJI's reputation. DJI's position was that they were merely a manufacturer of consumer-oriented drones, and could not control how a customer – especially one that happens to be their own government – might choose to use their products. There are other drone manufacturers (US-based Skydio, for example) that make specialized military drones for applications such as delivering explosives and doing surveillance, but DJI has never built those sorts of products.

Nonetheless, the US government started cracking down on DJI. There have been numerous attempts to ban DJI from the US market, and Skydio – unable to compete with DJI on features and price – has been criticized for its role in trying to get DJI banned.

In December 2021, DJI was one of eight Chinese technology firms that the US Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) placed on a blacklist that identified them as having provided technology to the Xinjiang Public Security Bureau. The blacklist made it illegal for US citizens to purchase or sell publicly traded securities connected with these firms, but DJI's products were still allowed to be sold in the US.

A few days later, the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) was signed into law, with the goal of ensuring that Americans are not funding forced labor in the Uyghur concentration camps. UFLPA requires any company that imports goods from the Xinjiang region into the US to certify that those goods were not produced using forced labor.

Enforcement has been random and unpredictable, and even though DJI is not based in Xinjiang, the UFLPA has been used by US Customs and Border Protection as justification for seizing shipments of DJI drones from Shenzhen to US customers and resellers.

Seized shipments

In October 2024, Reuters reported that DJI drone shipments had been seized, and that DJI had sent a letter to its US-based distributors stating that no forced labor is involved in any stage of its manufacturing process and that it had provided Customs with documentation verifying its compliance with UFLPA. DJI said in its letter that the claims made by US Customs were “unsubstantiated and categorically false, but the law gives them the authority to withhold goods without any tangible evidence.”

Over the next few months, other seizures of DJI drones were reported by resellers as well as individual customers. For example, drone certification instructor Ken Dono recorded a video last fall entitled DJI's import problem | Why my DJI Air 3S has been detained.

Mavic 4 Pro launch

Then on May 13, 2025, DJI launched its new Mavic 4 Pro drone. The Mavic 4 Pro had been eagerly anticipated by drone fans because of several unique new features (such as the Infinity Gimbal and a built-in high-quality Hasselblad camera), and orders started pouring in from all over the world as soon as it was released. Well, all over the world with one notable exception: the Mavic 4 Pro was not available in the United States!

As of the date of the Mavic 4 Pro launch and ever since (as of early July), the page on the DJI web for ordering a Mavic 4 Pro has worked fine in every country other than the United States, but you'll get a 404 Page Not Found error if you try to go there from inside the US. Here's the URL, if you'd like to check if that's still true: https://www.dji.com/global/mavic-4-pro

DJI was vague about the reason behind making the Mavic 4 Pro available everywhere except in the United States. They released a short statement saying “At this time, the DJI Mavic 4 Pro is not available for sale in the US market through DJI’s official e-commerce site (store.dji.com). We cannot comment on behalf of our retail partners.”

Although that implies that the Mavic 4 Pro might be available through DJI resellers, at this time no US-based DJI reseller has it in stock.

Competing via legislation

The next development in this drama came with an Executive Order published on the White House website on June 6, 2025 entitled UNLEASHING AMERICAN DRONE DOMINANCE. You can read the full text of the EO at that link, and it includes a variety of orders to the FAA and Department of Defense that are intended to make US airspace more drone friendly and to accelerate innovation among US drone manufacturers.

One of the key provisions of this Executive Order is that it requires all federal agencies to prioritize US-made drones over foreign models. Unfortunately, there are no US drone manufacturers that can currently compete with the features offered in foreign-made drones from DJI, Autel, and others. So this EO requires federal agencies to use second-rate drones, although US consumers are still free to purchase more advanced drones.

That last bit may change, however. New York congresswoman Elise Stefanik has sponsored a bill called the Countering CCP Drones Act (H.R. 2864), which identifies DJI's drones as posing "an unacceptable risk to U.S. national security." The bill was approved by the House of Representatives last year and has been referred to the Senate's Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation.

DJI strikes back

As of a couple of weeks ago, it feels like DJI has decided enough is enough.

On June 24, DJI released a comprehensive whitepaper on their approach to security and privacy issues. It asserts in the very first sentence that "we have demonstrated a commitment to safety and security long before rules or regulations required us to do so," and sections of the document feel like a direct response to some of the criticisms in Elise Stefanik's proposed legislation.

Then on June 25, the very next day, DJI made all of their drone products unavailable to US customers on their website at dji.com. Their drones also show Out Of Stock at all major resellers, including Adorama, B&H Photo, and Best Buy.

There have been many rumors and much speculation the last few days among those in the drone industry in the US, and then on July 3 DJI published a strongly worded blog post entitled Navigating U.S. Customs: Demonstrating DJI's Commitment to Ethical Production & Labor Practices. A few key quotes from the post:

• "The U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has cited the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA), as the reason for the current holdups. This assertion made against DJI, however, is entirely unfounded and categorically false. There is no reason for CBP to be detaining DJI’s drones."
• "DJI does not manufacture anything – in whole or in part – in Xinjiang. DJI has no manufacturing facilities in Xinjiang, nor do we source materials from the region."
• "The evidence clearly supports DJI’s compliance, while the claims of any violations are baseless and unfounded. We are confident that this issue will be resolved promptly if evaluated on its merits. In the meantime, we remain committed to the U.S. market and will keep our partners, customers, and the wider public informed as the situation develops."

What a messy situation this has become. Rumors are flying online, and some people think that DJI is going to start selling their products in the US again later this summer, although that seems to be speculation for now. Warranty repairs and replacements are potentially problematic for now, so I'm planning to be extra careful with my drone. I signed up for the DJI Care repair and replacement service when I purchased my drone, but that would require DJI to ship me a replacement, which sounds like it might not work right now.

Meanwhile, I'm just glad that I got my drone before this drama unfolded! I'm happy with the drone I have and still have lots to learn about it, so I'm planning to just keep having fun and watch how the drama plays out. I don't need anything from DJI right now, but they make the best drones in the world and I hope they can get back to selling them in the US.

I'll do a brief post in the future if/when something changes.