US robot curbs lay bare industry's dependence on Chinese parts

Rules aim to reshore production, but firms warn of higher costs and delays

STELLA YIFAN XIE August 25, 2026

NEW YORK -- New American restrictions on advanced robots are exposing the heavy reliance of American manufacturers and researchers on Chinese-made hardware, setting up a new clash between Washington's security objectives and the needs of a fast-growing industry.

The Federal Communications Commission moved in July to place advanced mobile robots on its Covered List, marking the Trump administration's latest effort to reduce U.S. dependence on foreign technology. But with China dominating key parts of the robotics supply chain and regulators yet to clarify how exemptions will work, companies are still trying to determine what the new rules will mean in practice.

"I think everybody is trying to figure out what it means to them and see what kind of impact it has," said Jeff Burnstein, president of the Association for Advancing Automation, a trade group representing almost 1,500 companies in robotics, AI and related automation technologies. Navigating the regulatory landscape "is currently a day-to-day thing," he said.

The latest restrictions come as global investors and technology companies pour massive sums into humanoid robots and other "physical AI" ecosystems that many executives view as the next frontier of automation. It also highlights how the FCC, traditionally responsible for overseeing media ownership and issuing broadcast licenses, has emerged since December as a key instrument of the Trump administration in curbing imports of a wide range of goods, including drones, internet routers and power inverters.

Peter Cowhey, a University of California San Diego professor emeritus specializing in global trade, told Nikkei Asia that the FCC import curbs are aimed at encouraging companies to diversify supply chains and reshore part of their production to the U.S.

"The challenge is that there is no particular mechanism to go from here to there in the substitution of American products for the Chinese products," said Cowhey, a former FCC official. "I would call this an incoherent policy of forcing import substitution," he said.

New advanced robots assembled in the U.S. will have to contain more than 65% domestic components by value in 2028 and more than 75% in 2029, according to the FCC website's FAQ page on the recent Covered List updates. But analysts broadly question how practical it is to reduce reliance on China, which supplies key components used for mobile robots, from sensors to articulated joints and motors.

One example is actuators, which are used to control humanoid robots' movements and typically represent 40% to 60% of the hardware bill of materials, Gavekal Technologies said in an Aug. 10 report. Keeping foreign content under 35% of the total cost is challenging, considering that, according to Gavekal, China also supplies the majority of batteries, lidars and motor controllers used to assemble robots.

"Chinese parts are not individually prohibited, but the cumulative reliance on Chinese supply chains will make it hard to hit those targets," Arthur Kroeber and his fellow Gavekal authors wrote.

Another key question is which companies will get the green light to be exempted from the robot import ban, which does not affect existing models already sold in the U.S.

"What that determination process is like has not been particularly transparent," said Kevin O'Hanlon, vice president of North America government relations at the U.S.-based Global Electronics Association, which represents more than 3,200 companies across the $6 trillion global electronics industry.

Some consumer router makers have been granted a temporary exemption from the import ban on the condition of a future commitment to manufacturing in the U.S., a person familiar with the matter told Nikkei Asia.

Certain companies producing routers have gotten the green light from the U.S. government to continue importing them from non-Chinese suppliers, despite China remaining a major source of supply, this person said.

"What we didn't see a whole lot was those offers being extended to Chinese-manufactured products," the person said.

"One central unanswered question is whether Chinese robotics companies have any genuine route to conditional approval, or whether the process will function as an allied-country carve-out," said Georg Stieler, managing director for Asia at German robotics consulting firm Stieler Technology & Market Advisory.

An FCC spokesperson directed Nikkei Asia to the FAQ page, without further comment.

Some American companies have championed the FCC's decision.

Evan Beard, CEO of industrial robot manufacturer Standard Bots, described the move as "one of the strongest technology-security actions in modern U.S. history" on the social platform X. He also urged the FCC to impose similar rules on fixed industrial robot arms.

"I sense that this is just the first round in a series of policies that will define the success and growth of the industry for decades to come," wrote Brendan Schulman, vice president of policy and government relations at Boston Dynamics, a leading producer in quadruped robotics that has been advocating for a national robotics strategy.

For now, the ban is widely expected to hit research labs and startups particularly hard, given their reliance on imported robots.

Michael Perry, who leads commercial strategy at Houston-based industrial humanoid robot startup Persona AI, told Nikkei Asia that suppliers of actuators, ball screws, batteries and other key components are already constrained and that sourcing restrictions are one more variable that robot markets will have to contend with as costs move through to end users.

"The question is, can we hit that volume required at the right price point?" asked Perry, who previously worked at Boston Dynamics as well as Chinese drone maker DJI. "Even if you take the need to source within the U.S. out of the equation, builders are already fighting for constrained resources," he said.

A late-July internal review by the Association for Advancing Automation found that among 31 research papers that were led by U.S. universities and used humanoid or quadruped robots, 28 employed robots from high-flying Chinese startup Unitree Robotics.

"Some of the startups depend on these less expensive products coming from other countries to build their own products," the association's Burnstein said.

"It's going to be harder for them to grow because the costs are going to go up," he said. "The availability might go down."

In the longer term, the fresh curbs could also backfire in creating an unstable regulatory environment that deters investment, with many companies expecting the FCC to add more products to the Covered List.

"When you have so much that's done through an executive order or you have these other processes that lack durability that can be undone by the next administration, it makes investment in the U.S. kind of difficult," the Global Electronics Association's O'Hanlon said.