The United States robotics industry is confronting a structural vulnerability that echoes decades of warnings about overdependence on Chinese manufacturing — this time centered on the components that power humanoid robots and automated systems now seen as critical to both industrial competitiveness and national security. A Business Insider investigation published this month details how American robotics companies, despite surging domestic investment, remain deeply reliant on Chinese-made actuators, sensors, and other precision components that are difficult and expensive to source elsewhere.

The dependency cuts across the supply chain. Actuators — the motorized joints that give humanoid robots their range of motion — are among the components most heavily sourced from Chinese manufacturers, who have built significant scale and cost advantages over years of state-backed industrial development. That dynamic is increasingly difficult to separate from the broader humanoid robotics competition between Washington and Beijing, which carries both economic and security implications.

China’s Industrial Head Start

China has not arrived at this position by accident. Its government has funneled sustained investment into robotics manufacturing as part of a broader industrial strategy, enabling domestic producers to undercut foreign competitors on price while matching or exceeding them on volume. The result is a component ecosystem that American firms find difficult to bypass, even as geopolitical tensions and export control debates make that reliance increasingly uncomfortable for policymakers.

According to the Business Insider report, some U.S. robotics executives privately acknowledge that re-shoring or ally-shoring critical components would take years and require capital outlays that smaller startups cannot absorb. Larger players face pressure from investors to maintain competitive unit economics — and Chinese-sourced parts remain central to hitting those targets. The trade-off between cost efficiency and supply chain security is one Washington has not yet resolved for this sector.

Policy Pressure Without a Clear Playbook

The Biden and Trump administrations have both attempted to use export controls and tariffs to reshape technology supply chains, with mixed results in semiconductors and telecommunications. Robotics presents a similar challenge: the components at issue are dual-use, widely traded, and embedded in global manufacturing processes in ways that make clean decoupling technically and economically costly. A Forbes analysis on AI humanoid robots notes that the trade war over these systems is expanding, with the U.S. moving to restrict exports of advanced robotics technology to China while simultaneously depending on Chinese suppliers for key inputs.

That contradiction is at the heart of the policy problem. Restricting what American firms can sell to China does little to reduce what they must still buy from China in order to manufacture competitive products at home. Defense-adjacent robotics programs — systems intended for logistics, base support, or battlefield roles — carry additional risk if their supply chains run through Chinese firms that could be subject to export restrictions or state direction during a crisis. Officials have not publicly confirmed specific procurement rules governing Chinese-sourced components in defense robotics programs.

The U.S.-China technology decoupling suggests that robotics will face the same enforcement gaps and industrial-base shortfalls that have slowed progress in other sectors. Building a resilient domestic supply chain for precision robotics components will require sustained public investment, aligned trade policy, and years of capacity development — none of which the industry currently has in place. Until then, American robotics firms will continue building the next generation of automated systems on a foundation that includes critical Chinese inputs, a tension policymakers have so far flagged but not resolved.