US robot and drone curbs can't close China's scale gap

In July and August, Washington tightened restrictions on foreign-made advanced robotic systems and imposed steep tariffs on imported drones and their components, both citing national-security concerns. The drone tariffs take effect in September, with additional component tariffs following in 2027. The moves extend the FCC’s Covered List, established in 2021 to target telecommunications and surveillance equipment from companies including Huawei, ZTE, and Hikvision, which has since expanded to foreign-made drones and, most recently, advanced robotic devices.

The restrictions arrive as Chinese manufacturers have built commanding positions in both drones and humanoid robots, often competing at prices U.S. and European rivals struggle to match. Global humanoid robot shipments hit 22,000 units in the first half of this year — the vast majority from Chinese manufacturers — according to a Counterpoint report. The world’s five largest humanoid makers by shipments — AgiBot, Unitree, Galbot, UBTECH, and Leju Robotics — were all Chinese and together accounted for 86% of global shipments in the period.

“The United States leads in frontier AI, software, and semiconductor innovation,” said Ankur Saxena, an investment director at TDK Ventures. “China leads in manufacturing scale, supply-chain depth, and cost.” That advantage could compound, he said, since lower prices let Chinese manufacturers deploy more robots, generating real-world data that improves their technology and drives costs down further. “You cannot sanction your way around a cost curve,” Saxena said. “You can only out-build it, and America has yet to begin making the decade-long investment that will require.”

Rather than a clean U.S.-China split, industry analysts and executives told TechCrunch the restrictions may fragment the global market further: Chinese companies expanding into price-sensitive regions with labor shortages — including Europe, Southeast Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East — while U.S. and allied manufacturers compete where security requirements carry more weight. The drone market already shows an early version of that split, with a U.S.-led ecosystem built around NDAA-compliant systems and a China-led ecosystem focused on low-cost, high-volume production, said Bentzion Levinson, founder and CEO of Virginia-based drone maker Heven AeroTech.

Why it matters

If the restrictions accelerate a regional splintering rather than a single global standard, robotics makers in Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan could find room to compete between cheaper Chinese systems and pricier U.S. ones.