The measures include drone tariffs that take effect in September, with additional component tariffs scheduled for 2027, and an expanded scope for the FCC’s Covered List, established in 2021. The list began by targeting telecommunications and surveillance equipment from companies such as Huawei, ZTE and Hikvision, and has now grown to include foreign-made drones and, most recently, advanced robotic devices.
That regulatory push targets a market where Chinese manufacturers have already built dominant positions. Counterpoint reported global humanoid shipments reached 22,000 units in the first half of this year, the vast majority from Chinese firms. The five largest makers by shipments, AgiBot, Unitree, Galbot, UBTECH and Leju Robotics, were all Chinese and together accounted for 86% of global shipments in the first half of 2026.
Analysts say scale and cost, not a single controlling technology, underpins China’s advantage. Ankur Saxena, investment director at TDK Ventures, summed up the split, saying, "The United States leads in frontier AI, software and semiconductor innovation, China leads in manufacturing scale, supply-chain depth and cost." Saxena added a warning about limits to sanctions, "You cannot sanction your way around a cost curve. You can only out-build it, and America has yet to begin making the decade-long investment that will require."
Industry voices expect a more fragmented global market rather than a simple U.S.-China divide. Soumen Mandal, a principal analyst at Counterpoint Research, and others said Chinese makers will press into price-sensitive regions across Europe, Southeast Asia, Latin America and the Middle East, following the EV playbook of build at home, expand overseas, then localize production. Bentzion Levinson, founder and CEO of Heven AeroTech, described an emerging split: "The industry is increasingly splitting into two ecosystems: a U.S.-led market built around American-made, NDAA-compliant systems, and a China-led market focused on low-cost, high-volume production." Levinson argued the next technical fight will be over power and payload design as battery limits become central.
Some U.S. firms welcomed tighter rules. Agility Robotics praised the FCC move in July as a way to prevent foreign-made advanced robots from becoming deeply embedded in the U.S. market and highlighted its Digit humanoid, designed and assembled in the United States, while urging continued access to research tools and technologies. With tariffs due in September and component levies to follow in 2027, the immediate effect will be to shelter security-sensitive segments of U.S. demand, while likely shifting the broader contest for scale and cost to other markets and to component and energy systems where the next advantage may be won.
