Using Cloudfront, the redirect was the only built-in option for a long time. They only added pushbutton HSTS recently. But I'd say author is correct that if you

Using Cloudfront, the redirect was the only built-in option for a long time. They only added pushbutton HSTS recently. But I'd say author is correct that if you're hosting an API there's no reason to support http at all. Just send a 400 on all requests and let the client developers use common sense.