Recently, Congress introduced the "Drones for First Responders Act" (DFR Act) which, despite its name, would be detrimental to public safety drone efforts and potentially devastating to drone small businesses in the U.S. The DFR Act would impose new import taxes on the most popular drones in America and by 2030 would ban any drone manufactured in China. It does this through parts restrictions based on where the drone is assembled, not cybersecurity best practices. The results of this legislation would be dire, including the loss of hundreds of thousands of American jobs with small businesses feeling the brunt of higher costs, a potential collapse of the consumer drone market and a reduction in the use of drones in life-saving operations. 

To be clear, this bill is not about security concerns, as the very same parts and components manufactured in China that would be banned from import could still be utilized by a U.S. manufacturer who simply assembles the drone here.

Anyone that uses drones, whether you fly for fun, for your career, for research or public safety, would be negatively impacted and our members of Congress need to hear about it. We can’t take this affront to our drone rights, our livelihood and our hobby lying down, and we need to speak up now.

Please fill out this short form and within seconds, you can contact your members of Congress and urge them to oppose the DFR Act. We’ve provided content to get started, but we strongly encourage you to personalize your message. Tell them why you chose the drones you use, how you would be impacted if you could no longer use those drones, what effect it would have on your business, etc. They say all politics is local, but we like to say that all politics is personal, and your personal reasons for opposing this new tax and ban strategy will be most influential here.

Please don’t delay, take action and tell your members of Congress to oppose this industry-crippling bill today.

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