Project 2025 Tracker / What’s done, what’s next

26. Trade · Notable · Contested — excluded from counts

Prohibit Chinese-made drones in American airspace

Attempted

789 26. Trade · from “The Case for Fair Trade”

“Prohibit the use of Communist Chinese–made drones in American airspace.”

What has happened

  1. Attempted

    Commerce's section 232 investigation into UAS imports, opened 2025-07-16, produced Proclamation 11055: 100 percent ad valorem duties from 2026-09-03 on UAS over 25 kg, UAS with thermal imagers, docking stations and listed critical components, and 25 percent on smaller UAS, with allied-country ceilings of 10-15 percent that Chinese-made drones cannot reach. A prohibitive tariff is not a prohibition; Chinese-made drones may still be bought, sold and flown in American airspace.

  2. Attempted

    EO 14307 section 7 is the closest thing to this ask: it ordered the Federal Acquisition Security Council to publish a Covered Foreign Entity List within 30 days identifying companies posing drone supply-chain risks, and directed the Secretary of Commerce within 90 days to "take actions, including proposing rulemaking and conducting investigations, to secure the United States drone supply chain against foreign control or exploitation". It is a directive about supply chains and procurement, not a prohibition on flying Chinese-made drones. The companion order of the same day, EO 14305 (Restoring American Airspace Sovereignty), is about counter-drone authority and does not turn on where a drone was made.

Research log

What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence

Research notes

Federal agencies were already barred from buying or operating Chinese-made drones before the window (the American Security Drone Act of 2023 and section 848 of the FY2020 NDAA, which EO 14307 section 9 leans on). The ask is broader - all Chinese-made drones, in American airspace - and that has not been done.

Leads, all read on 2026-09-01 and none of them a prohibition:

  • FCC public notice Unleashing American Drone Dominance (2026-04-16) seeks comment on spectrum and licensing reforms to help American drone makers; it neither adds DJI or Autel to the Covered List nor restricts Chinese equipment. https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2026/04/16/2026-07381/unleashing-american-drone-dominance
  • A DoD notice of 2026-06-10, Notice of Availability of Designation of Chinese Military Companies, is the only Federal Register document in the window whose full text carries both “DJI” and “Autel”; designation under 10 U.S.C. 4872 restricts dealings with the Department, not civil airspace.
  • FAA’s designation of fixed-site UAS restrictions (2026-05-06) and the Part 108 beyond-visual- line-of-sight rulemaking are origin-neutral.
  • The FCC’s Third Report and Order (FR 2026-18535, 2026-09-11, effective 2026-10-13) bans authorizing devices that contain logic-bearing components from producer-based Covered List entities. It does not apply to the production-location UAS entries “unless the producing entity is independently identified on the Covered List”, and it governs authorizing new devices, not flying them. It does not reach this ask (review of the 2026-09-11 scan triage; see #2200).
Action
restrict
Object
Chinese-made drones in American airspace
ID
2079