Eight House Republicans are pushing US Customs and Border Protection to investigate whether a Chinese state-owned food trading company used a California importer with no apparent drone industry ties to move nearly five tons of unmanned aircraft hardware into the United States.
Rep. Pat Harrigan, R-N.C., posted the letter to CBP Commissioner Rodney Scott on X, noting that Chinese exporters may have found a way to route restricted drone components around enforcement by disguising them as agricultural cargo.
The letter centers on a single transaction. On March 25, 2025, Fujian Cereals, Oils & Foodstuffs Import & Export Group Corporation, a provincial state-owned enterprise based in Fuzhou, shipped 4,849 kilograms of cargo classified under HTS code 8806, the tariff category for unmanned aircraft, to Ontime International Trading LLC, a Walnut, California importer. The lawmakers argue Ontime has no public connection to the UAS industry and say the pairing fits a pattern of “deliberate supply chain obfuscation.”
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Customs manifest data shows Fujian Cereals’ own trade profile, drawn from nearly a thousand US shipments tracked since 2007, skews toward cereal preparations, dairy, furniture, and frozen food, not aerospace components.
Ontime’s own import history is dominated by housewares such as glassware, vacuum cups, and electronics accessories, sourced largely from separate Chinese suppliers in Xiamen and Shenzhen. Notably, manifest records do show Ontime has handled drone hardware before, separate from the shipment the letter cites. In April 2025, Ontime was listed as the consignee on a shipment from Guangzhou Xaircraft Technology Co., carrying an agricultural drone sprayer system and remote controller, with a notify party identified as Pegasus Robotic Inc.
The lawmakers argue the shipment points to a systemic hole in enforcement, not an isolated incident. It points to Section 301 tariffs on Chinese UAS imports, the American Security Drone Act, a Trump administration executive order on domestic drone manufacturing, and new Bureau of Industry and Security rules as evidence that Washington has built a policy framework the signers say is only as effective as CBP’s ability to catch evasion at the border.
They also raised data security concerns tied to Chinese-made drones more broadly, citing warnings from CISA and the FBI that internet-connected drones built with components from companies tied to Chinese intelligence services could carry backdoors enabling data exfiltration or remote disruption.
The letter asks CBP to take three steps. First, formally review the March 25, 2025 transaction for potential tariff misclassification and examine Ontime’s beneficial ownership for any foreign government stake. Second, use the Automated Commercial Environment system to audit drone and drone-component imports dating back to January 2022, focusing on shippers whose historical trade is concentrated outside aerospace. Third, refer any confirmed instances to the Justice Department’s Trade Fraud Task Force and open an Enforce and Protect Act proceeding where the evidence supports a finding of antidumping or countervailing duty evasion.
Co-signers include Reps. Derrick Van Orden, Byron Donalds, Stephanie Bice, Ben Cline, Addison McDowell, John Rose, Nicholas Begich III, and Tom Barrett. Harrigan has built a legislative record on the issue, having introduced the SkyFoundry Act, which Congress folded into the fiscal 2026 defense authorization bill, and the American Drone Manufacturing Dominance Act, which would condition federal grants on phasing out foreign-made drones from law enforcement use.
CBP had not publicly responded to the letter as of this writing.
