The U.S. is building barriers around drones and robots, but China has scale to get around them

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The U.S. moved aggressively on robotics security in July and August 2026, imposing steep tariffs on imported drones and components and expanding the FCC's Covered List to include advanced robotic devices. Drone tariffs take effect in September; additional component tariffs follow in 2027. The list — which already named Huawei, ZTE, and Hikvision — now encompasses foreign drone and humanoid robot manufacturers. The restrictions target a market China already dominates. The five largest humanoid robot makers by global shipments — AgiBot, Unitree, Galbot, UBTECH, and Leju Robotics — are all Chinese and together controlled 86% of the 22,000 units shipped worldwide in H1 2026, per Counterpoint Research. U.S. producers operate at a fraction of that volume. The cost advantage is self-reinforcing: larger deployments generate training data that improves performance, while higher volumes push unit costs lower. Analysts and executives told TechCrunch the outcome may not be the clean decoupling Washington wants. Unlike semiconductors, robotics does not pivot on a single controllable choke point — Chinese firms can adapt supply chains and redirect sales to markets without U.S. security requirements. Unitree is already verticalizing component production; XPeng is transferring chip and vehicle manufacturing expertise into humanoid robots. U.S. restrictions protect domestic procurement from Chinese systems but do little to close the scale gap globally. Whether Chinese manufacturers pivot to Europe, Southeast Asia, and Latin America — compounding their lead there — is the open question the article raises but does not resolve.