Chinese drone maker DJI sues Pentagon over ‘military' designation
Chinese drone company Shenzhen DJI Innovation Technology Co., Ltd., commonly known as DJI, is suing the U.S. Defense Department in a bid to overturn the department's designation of the firm as a 'military company.'
The lawsuit alleges
that the listing is unfair because 'DJI is neither owned nor controlled by the Chinese military and … sells only 'consumer and commercial' — not military — drones.'
DJI names Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Deputy Defense Secretary for Industrial Base Policy Laura Taylor-Kale as co-defendants in the lawsuit filed by U.S. law firm Paul Weiss in the Washington, D.C., District Court on Friday. The company alleges that the Pentagon has refused 'to provide its rationale for DJI's designation' and ignored requests to meet with DJI representatives. Neither DJI nor the Pentagon immediately responded to requests for comment.
The new suit comes in response to the Pentagon's move to place DJI — the world's largest drone maker — on a list of '
Military Companies Operating in the United States
' in 2022. That followed the Pentagon's declaration that DJI products '
pose potential threats to national security
' in 2021 and barred their use by U.S. government agencies. The lawsuit claims those actions have inflicted 'ongoing financial and reputational harm' on the company.
The lawsuit reflects how the company is going on the offensive as it faces
a congressional push
to ban DJI's drones from use in U.S. airspace. The company's woes deepened in August when the House Select Committee on China urged the Commerce Department to probe allegations of DJI
seeking to dodge trade restrictions
through the use of front companies.
Suing the Pentagon is the latest effort by a Chinese firm 'to weaponize U.S. legal frameworks to undermine national security,' said Craig Singleton, senior China fellow at the nonprofit thinktank the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. 'Ultimately, this lawsuit is a dead-end for DJI.'
Josh Gerstein contributed to this story
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San Francisco Chronicle
an hour ago
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'Silence regarding the terms suggests that there is less substance to the deal than the Trump Administration implies,″ said Moon, who also served as a diplomat in China. Wait. This sounds familiar. How did we get here? The agreement that emerged Thursday and Friday builds on a "framework'' that Trump announced June 11 after two days of high-level U.S.-China talks in London. Then, he announced, China had agreed to ease restrictions on rare earths. In return, the United States said it would stop seeking to revoke the visas of Chinese students on U.S. college campuses. And last month, after another meeting in Geneva, the two countries had agreed to dramatically reduce massive taxes they'd slapped on each other's products, which had reached as high as 145% against China and 125% against the U.S. Those triple-digit tariffs threatened to effectively end trade between the United States and China and caused a frightening sell-off in financial markets. In Geneva, the two countries agreed to back off and keep talking: America's tariffs went back down to a still-high 30% and China's to 10%. That led to the talks in London earlier this month and to this week's announcement. Where does all this leave U.S.-China economic relations? If nothing else, the two countries are trying to ratchet down tensions after demonstrating how much they can hurt each other. 'The U.S. and China appear to be easing the chokeholds they had on each other's economies through export controls on computer chips and rare earth minerals, respectively,' said Eswar Prasad, professor of trade policy at Cornell University. "This is a positive step but a far cry from signaling prospects of a substantial de-escalation of tariffs and other trade hostilities.'' Trump launched a trade war with China in his first term, imposing tariffs on most Chinese goods in a dispute over China's attempts to supplant U.S. technological supremacy. 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Since returning to the White House in January, Trump has made aggressive use of tariffs. In addition to his levies on China, he has imposed "baseline'' 10% taxes on imports from every country in the world . And he's announced even higher taxes — so-called reciprocal tariffs ranging from 11% to 50% — on countries with which the United States runs a trade deficit. But after financial markets sank on fears of massive disruption to world trade, Trump suspended the reciprocal levies for 90 days to give countries a chance to negotiate reductions in their barriers to U.S. exports. That pause lasts until July 8. On Friday, Bessent told Fox Business Network that the talks could extend beyond the deadline and be 'wrapped up by Labor Day'' Sept. 1 with 10 to 12 of America's most important trading partners. 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The Hill
an hour ago
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U.S., China announce a trade agreement – again. Here's what it means
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In turn, the United States will lift a series of restrictive measures it had imposed on China.' The Chinese have complained about U.S. controls on exports of advanced U.S. technology to China. But the ministry statement did not specifically say whether the United States planned to ease or lift those controls. In his interview on Fox Business Network's 'Mornings with Maria,' Bessent mentioned that the United States had earlier imposed 'countermeasures' against China and 'had held back some vital supplies for them.' 'What we're seeing here is a de-escalation under President Trump's leadership,' Bessent said, without spelling out what concessions the United States had made or whether they involved America's export controls. Jeff Moon, a trade official in the Obama administration who now runs the China Moon Strategies consultancy, wondered why Trump hadn't disclosed details of the agreement two days after it had been reached. 'Silence regarding the terms suggests that there is less substance to the deal than the Trump Administration implies,″ said Moon, who also served as a diplomat in China. The agreement that emerged Thursday and Friday builds on a 'framework' that Trump announced June 11 after two days of high-level U.S.-China talks in London. Then, he announced, China had agreed to ease restrictions on rare earths. In return, the United States said it would stop seeking to revoke the visas of Chinese students on U.S. college campuses. And last month, after another meeting in Geneva, the two countries had agreed to dramatically reduce massive taxes they'd slapped on each other's products, which had reached as high as 145% against China and 125% against the U.S. Those triple-digit tariffs threatened to effectively end trade between the United States and China and caused a frightening sell-off in financial markets. 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Axios
2 hours ago
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Texas Instruments expanding U.S. chip production
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