Humanoid bottlenecks emerge amid US-China tensions

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China’s dominance in critical humanoid hardware is exacerbating a supply chain bottleneck for Western developers, as rising production volumes and ongoing geopolitical tensions increase pressure on suppliers.

A new report from Smart Analytics Global (SAG) found China dominates the ecosystem of motors and reducers for humanoid robots, with the advantage “going beyond individual suppliers.”

The report highlights persistent U.S.-China tensions, brought to something of a head with the FCC’s banning of foreign-made humanoid robot imports, as a potential catalyst to make this dominance a critical supply chain problem for Western producers.

“The biggest vulnerabilities would emerge in the hardware supply chain, particularly motors, precision reducers, actuators and other critical mechanical components,” said Linda Sui, founder and analyst at SAG. “These components are essential to humanoid robot movement and manipulation.”

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The risk of supply chain dominance

The specialist nature of humanoid components means replacing an existing supplier would be challenging, as alternatives may require significant redesign, testing and validation. Germany’s Schaeffler and Japan’s Harmonic Drive Systems provide important non-China alternatives, but their current humanoid volumes remain relatively small.

Sui added that the risks extend to upstream materials and manufacturing processes, including permanent magnets, precision gears and bearings.

Ultimately, the tensions could push humanoid manufacturers to prioritize supply-chain resilience over cost.

“We believe Western humanoid manufacturers may have to make this choice, unless there is a meaningful shift in U.S.-China trade and technology policies toward greater openness,” Sui said. “Under the current geopolitical environment, supply-chain security and resilience are becoming increasingly important strategic considerations.”

In response, Western manufacturers may need to diversify their suppliers, localize production, or source more components from other markets such as the U.S., Europe, Japan and other areas, even if these alternatives are more expensive.

This would likely boost manufacturing costs in the near term, particularly as alternative supply chains lack the scale, efficiency and integration already established in China. These additional costs will, Sui says, have to be accepted as necessary evils to ensure long-term supply stability.

For the U.S., however, the ban on all foreign imports leaves the country in a difficult position of having to turn entirely inward for its component supply, despite not having the framework to do so.

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The U.S. demand problem

Jeff Burnstein, president of the Association for Advancing Automation (A3), said the gap between the U.S. and China is less about manufacturing capability than about the market that makes manufacturing worthwhile.

China’s supply chain didn’t appear by accident, he argues. Beijing set a national goal of leading in robotics, then incentivized companies to set up shop there, creating the demand that enabled domestic component makers to scale.

“They had a national strategy to become a leader in robotics,” he said. “They keep updating that strategy, new five-year plans. They saw the future, and they’re building the future that they saw.”

The U.S., he said, has no equivalent. “There is no robotics strategy. It doesn’t exist,” Burnstein said, noting that A3 has been advocating for one.

Restrictions on foreign components assume domestic alternatives will fill the gap, but those suppliers don’t yet exist at scale, given a lack of both demand and a regulatory framework.

In response, Burnstein said there should be increased incentives to adopt robots, support for more small and medium-sized companies using this technology, and more government-funded training programs.

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A phased-in approach to the import ban would have helped the West establish reliable sources of components more effectively, he said. “A domestic supply chain is possible, but it can’t happen by shutting off the supply chain from China overnight.”

The challenge of supply chain diversification

While Western developers can look to established suppliers in Europe and Japan as alternatives, bringing these capabilities together into a competitive, scalable humanoid supply chain will require significant investment, coordination and time.

China has a highly integrated ecosystem spanning motors, reducers, gears, bearings and actuators. Replicating that to maintain an integrated supply chain and the customization required for the various components is challenging.

“You cannot simply replicate years of manufacturing experience, supplier relationships and production capacity overnight,” Sui said.

Many humanoid robot manufacturers require customized systems to meet their specific requirements, which takes time, particularly as humanoid production scales.

Not every analyst sees the obstacle as structural. For Lian Ji Su, an analyst at Omdia, a division of Informa TechTarget, China’s dominance partly reflects the purchasing habits of Chinese robot makers rather than an absence of alternatives.

“I would argue that the reasons behind the ‘dominance’ of Chinese suppliers are mainly due to the preference of Chinese robotics vendors to utilize Chinese suppliers,” he said.

Western developers have established options in Schaeffler, Festo and Harmonic Drive, whose components are generally considered superior to Chinese equivalents, Su said. The bigger hurdle is scale rather than technology, and as those suppliers increase output, they could become more cost-competitive, letting humanoid developers reduce their reliance on Chinese parts.

“The situation is fully realistic -- it is not a matter of if, but of when,” he said.

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