What the threshold measures
The FCC added advanced robotic devices to its list of banned equipment last month. The rule covers new models of foreign-made humanoids, quadrupeds, robot vacuums and lawn mowers; to enter the US market a robot has to be assembled domestically with at least 65 per cent of its components by value produced in the country. That share rises to 75 per cent in 2029. Devices already on sale are untouched, robots imported for development rather than for sale are allowed, and companies that want to import can apply for conditional approval by filing a plan for how they will move manufacturing onshore.[1]
Because the threshold is written as a percentage, it is computed across the whole bill of materials. That computation says how much of a robot was made domestically; it says nothing about which part can stop the line. Two robots can clear the same 65 per cent bar while one has a second supplier in Germany for the missing part and the other has none at all. The figure treats those two cases alike.[1]
Substitution time
On 5 August this column argued, reading a warehouse robot, that the only part from China in the tugger was the battery cell and that dependence was set less by the aggregate parts share than by the substitution time of components with no second source. The founders Rest of World spoke to describe the same limit from the other end. Michael Perry, head of commercial strategy at Persona AI, says many robotics components at home are too expensive, too slow to procure or completely unavailable. For such a component the ban does more than raise a cost, it stops the line; the threshold carries no trace of that difference.[1], [2]
The routes the founders describe show how the threshold works in practice. Anto Patrex, founder of CosmicBrain AI, had his first products assembled in China and opened an additional facility in Canada in early 2026; because key components still come from China, those robots cannot be sold in the US under the new rule. Perry's company buys parts from Taiwan, Japan, South Korea and Italy for clients who ask on security grounds, and is still working to reach the 65 per cent threshold. Perry says Washington is showing only the stick and should also fund the growth of domestic supply.[1]
The number that can be measured today
The clearest figure available is a sales figure: according to the research firm Omdia, roughly 90 per cent of the humanoid robots sold worldwide in 2025 were Chinese. That share describes last year's sales and measures no component share inside a robot. The FCC's stated basis is a security one: the agency pointed to vulnerabilities found in Unitree robots and to a DJI robot vacuum user who reached 7,000 other robots through a loophole. Whether the threshold really becomes binding will show in the next step: if a robot maker publishes its component-value share audited against the FCC's 65 per cent definition, or if the first conditional approvals resting on a plan to move manufacturing onshore are disclosed, the threshold turns into a number that can be measured.[1]