alt Hacker NewsI want to believe this is some ploy to open the market for some US manufacturer that slipped a few thousand dollars in an envelope but I have a sneaking suspicion that nobody is coming to fill the void left by this naive protectionism. (Or is it deliberate sabotage? I don't even know anymore)
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Skydio? For a while they were #2 in consumer drones but found they couldn't compete with DJI and exited the consumer market in 2023. They now do > 50% of their business for the U.S. military and are in tight with the U.S. government. Could be a plan to re-enter the consumer market, this time with no competition.
> some US manufacturer that slipped a few thousand dollars
As if they even need to do it surreptitiously. They'd just announce it in the Oval Office with a giant gold plaque for Trump, a few million bucks for the ballroom, and agree that government purchases can be made in Trumpcoin.
If it was phased in and didn't specifically include allied country imports, I could believe that.
This door-slamming-shut-suddenly method says there is no plan, and given we don't domestically make most of the critical components ourselves, at best it's going to take awhile to build the factories and expertise to make up for the loss of the biggest suppliers in the market.
We'll get to pay much higher prices for much worse products while we do so.
Just looking at what's available for enterprise use (since there is no consumer-selling US drone company at this point) it looks like US companies are around a decade behind.