More than 2 kilograms, including the charging base, and at least 200 kilobits per second of communication. This is not a specification sheet; it is a regulatory threshold: the one that now decides a mobile machine’s access to the US market. In other words, anything that moves and phone-homes. On 28 July, the FCC’s Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau added “advanced robotic devices” manufactured outside the United States to its Covered List, alongside foreign power inverters, as noted by Sidley. It took the week of 4–10 August for the sector to finish reading the text — and to understand that the criterion adopted is not the manufacturer’s nationality, but the address of its factory.

First, one must say what the decision is not. Neither a customs duty nor a sales ban: it is a refusal of equipment certification. Devices already certified remain marketable; only the authorisation for new equipment is blocked, and foreign models must go through a conditional approval procedure, with applications to be submitted before 1 January 2028, as specified by IEEE Spectrum. The consequence is temporal before it is commercial: it does not affect stock, it affects the 2027–2028 catalogues. Those selling today lose nothing; those preparing their next generation have just lost all scheduling flexibility.

The criterion is no longer the manufacturer’s passport

The doctrinal shift is contained in one sentence, and three independent analyses confirm it. The IFR stated it most clearly on 7 August: the criterion for application is the place of production, not the nationality of the manufacturer, with a US, European or Asian company falling under the restriction as soon as manufacturing takes place outside the United States. A US manufacturer that assembles abroad is affected; an Asian manufacturer that assembles on US soil is not. The passport no longer protects anyone; the factory address decides everything.

The scope says a lot about the intention. Service robots, AMRs, humanoids and quadrupeds are covered; traditional industrial robots — articulated, Cartesian, SCARA, parallel — as well as drones, connected vehicles and medical devices are explicitly excluded. The FCC is therefore not regulating robotics, but mobile, connected robotics deployable outside cages: that which circulates in a warehouse, a lobby or a hospital corridor, and which sends data back.

A network police force imposed on a barely born market

The order of magnitude remains unposed by anyone. Global humanoid shipments reach 19,100 units in the first half of 2026, compared with 5,100 units a year earlier, reports TASS; more than 70% of them are already going to industrial and commercial uses, compared with around half a year earlier, according to Forbes. Washington is therefore applying a network security measure to a market whose global half-year volume fits in a factory order book. As a security measure, it is premature; as industrial policy, it is perfectly calibrated — the rule is written while the installed base is thin enough for it to shape the market rather than be shaped by it.

The reactions gathered by Manufacturing Dive on 4 August are better read by the interest position of the speaker than by what is said. On the supplier side, Robert Little, former head of robotics strategy at Novanta, sees it as a lever intended primarily to encourage domestic production, and judges it effective in that regard. On the integrator side, Erik Nieves, CEO of Plus One Robotics, expresses surprise at the scale of a text that also hits US trading partners — Japan, Germany, South Korea — and not just China. Those selling components applaud a barrier; those buying robots to integrate them see their catalogue shrink.

Compliant by accident, not by obedience

The week provides its own reading grid, to be handled with caution: it is a convergence, in no way a causality. The Hyundai Motor Group’s Atlas plan — more than 25,000 humanoids deployed in its factories from 2028, i.e. more than 80% of a targeted annual capacity of 30,000 units — dates from 19 May (KED Global) and starts at the Metaplant America factory in Georgia, with an announced US capacity of more than 300,000 actuators per year, according to the Korea Times alone. The RoboFab factory of Agility Robotics, sized for 10,000 units per year, and the roughly 75% of Digit’s parts that the manufacturer declares sourced in the United States, were announced as early as 24 June. Both predate the decision: compliant by accident, not by obedience — and an industrial lead is not caught up by changing one’s mind.

The exit door, however, has a priced cost. Conditional approval would impose a domestic content threshold under the Buy American Act of 65% for equipment delivered up to 2028, rising to 75% in 2029, with the applicant additionally required to provide a dated plan for the establishment or expansion of its production in the United States. This point is documented only by Sidley: a single source, to be taken as such. If confirmed, the conditionality is not a declarative formality but an investment obligation.

You relocate an assembly line, not a component base

This is where the measure meets its limit. Chinese manufacturers account for 97% of global humanoid shipments in the semester (Forbes), with AgiBot taking 44% ahead of Unitree at 31% (TASS). More than half of the top 100 global suppliers of reducers, servomotors and vision sensors are also reportedly based in China: the indication comes from iXBT, a single and fragile source, to be read as such and not as proof. Moving assembly does not move the BOM. A humanoid assembled on US soil with Chinese reducers and servomotors remains, from the point of view of real dependency, a Chinese robot: the rule changes the address of the last screw, not that of the material cost.

The irony falls on the one that best embodies the target. Unitree, whose US sales account for 13.3% of 2025 revenue according to Robotics and Automation News, sets the issue price of its STAR Market IPO in Shanghai at a multiple of 219.23 times earnings, compared with 38.56 times on average for general equipment manufacturing (Jiemian), for a capitalisation of around 60.99 billion yuan, nearly 9.04 billion dollars (Humanoid Guide). The market pays dearly for future growth the very week that one of its outlets closes — not on what the manufacturer sells today, but on what it will sell.

The allies, meanwhile, do not respond to the FCC: they manufacture the same response as it. On 6 August, Koo Yun-cheol, South Korea’s Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Economy and Finance, announced a target of distributing around 1,000 AI robots per year, backed by two poles — a robot foundry and a component cluster in Saemangeum, and a robotic demonstration test site in the Daegyeong region (Newspim). In Japan, Mitsubishi Motors and the startup Highlanders sealed a protocol for serial production and target 1,000 humanoids per month at the Kyoto site, reusing an idle internal combustion engine line (Interesting Engineering), with a targeted start in early 2027 (Drives & Controls). A single Japanese line targets a thousand units per month, when the whole world has shipped 19,100 in six months.

Three things will be verifiable in the days that follow. Unitree’s online share subscription opens on 10 August, payment due by the 12th at the latest: it will soon be known whether the multiple of 219.23 times holds up against a market that has read the Covered List. The Buy American Act threshold awaits, meanwhile, to be cross-referenced by a second source; without it, the scale of the investment obligation remains unknown. Finally, proof of causality would be a manufacturer announcing a US implantation citing the 28 July decision. None did so this week: so far, the rule and the factories are advancing in parallel, without it being possible to say which is pulling the other.