America Needs a National Robotics Strategy

America invented the industrial robot, but now the United States is falling behind. The bipartisan National Commission on Robotics Act, introduced earlier this month by Senators Dave McCormick (R-PA), John Hickenlooper (D-CO), Todd Young (R-IN), and Martin Heinrich (D-NM), together with its House companion (H.R. 7334) from Representatives Jay Obernolte (R-CA), Jennifer McClellan (D-VA), and Bob Latta (R-OH), is an opportunity to begin turning the tide.

America invented the industrial robot, which first went to work on a General Motors assembly line in 1961, yet today the United States accounts for just 5.4 percent of global robot exports, operates less than 10 percent of the world’s industrial robots, and does not possess a single domestic foundry producing them. The National Commission on Robotics Act would establish an independent commission of recognized experts charged with assessing U.S. competitiveness in robotics and recommending policies to restore American leadership. Congress should pass it expeditiously.

Robotics promises to be one of the most consequential technologies of the next few decades. Capabilities in robotics increasingly determine manufacturing competitiveness in virtually every sector, from automobiles to aerospace to electronics, and experts expect it to be one of the principal drivers of future productivity growth. Furthermore, it is a quintessentially dual-use technology: the same advances that power factory automation underpins cutting-edge defense systems.

Robotics adoption tends to track labor costs: the more expensive human labor is, the faster a robot pays for itself by taking over that labor, so the highest-wage economies have the strongest incentive to automate. Yet despite having some of the world’s highest manufacturing wages, the United States adopts just 70 percent of the robots its wage levels would predict, ranking 13th in the world. Indeed, only 8.3 percent of U.S. manufacturing firms have incorporated robots into their operations at all.

China, by contrast, has made robotics a centerpiece of its innovation mercantilist drive for global industrial dominance. Beijing’s “Made in China 2025” strategy and its five-year plan for the robotics industry set explicit goals for self-sufficiency and global leadership, and a 2023 national plan called for mass production of humanoid robots as early as 2025 and world-leading capability by 2027. The Chinese government has followed the same playbook as with other sectors, allocating at least $6 billion in subsidies to robotics, offering generous tax incentives for equipment investment, and establishing a state-backed venture fund expected to mobilize roughly 1 trillion yuan (about $138 billion) for robotics, AI, and other frontier technologies. In Dongguan’s “Robot City” more than 400 robotics firms, universities, and research institutes cluster around a government-backed research campus. (For comparison, the ARM Institute, America’s flagship public-private robotics manufacturing accelerator, operates on roughly $30 million.)

The results are telling: in every year since 2023, China has installed more industrial robots in its factories than the rest of the world combined, accounting for 54 percent of global installations in 2024; its operational stock of some 2 million robots is the largest of any nation by far; and, adjusted for wage levels, China adopts an astounding 12.5 times more robots than expected, the highest rate in the world.

To be sure, most Chinese robotics firms have been “fast followers,” competing principally on price (“80 percent as good for 70 percent of the price,” as the industry saying goes) while remaining weaker in software, which accounts for roughly 80 percent of a robot’s value. But China has begun innovating its own software to become a system-level competitor, wielding a potent mix of top-down strategic direction, concentrated industrial scale, and supply-chain speed that gives its firms an iteration velocity Western competitors struggle to match. Since 2017, more than 3,400 robotics start-ups have launched in China. In short, it’s likely only a matter of time before Chinese robotics firms reach the leading edge, just as Chinese firms have in electric vehicles/batteries, solar panels, nuclear power, and telecommunications equipment.

Meanwhile, the United States currently stands virtually alone among leading robotics nations in lacking a national robotics strategy. Beyond China’s plans, South Korea’s $2.2 billion Fourth Basic Plan on Intelligent Robots aims to put one million robots to work by 2030, Japan funds robotics development through its Moonshot R&D Program, and Germany and the European Union support robotics through substantial R&D grants and the Horizon Europe program. U.S. federal robotics policy remains fragmented across dozens of agencies, and no office in the federal government owns the issue.

The National Commission on Robotics Act rightly treats this as the techno-economic challenge it is. The bill directs the Department of Commerce to stand up an 18-member commission of recognized experts in robotics and its applications, with 12 members appointed by congressional leaders of both parties and 6 by the president. The commission would examine the questions most critical to a national robotics strategy, including:

• U.S. competitiveness and the state of the domestic robotics market;
• How to win and hold a technological edge in industrial, retail, and commercial deployment;
• How the actions foreign governments are taking to advance robotics;
• How to create opportunities for partnerships among industry, academia, and government;
• How can workforce incentives to attract robotics and STEM talent; and
• How do supply-chain risks and policies to expand domestic robot manufacturing.

The commission would be required to deliver an interim report within one year and, within two years, a final report whose recommendations would provide the analytical foundation for that strategy.

This congressionally chartered commission—which will have the authority to obtain information from any federal agency, a professional staff, and a hard two-year deadline—is well-positioned to lay the groundwork for a comprehensive national robotics strategy. Indeed, Congress has successfully run this play before: the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence, created in the 2019 defense bill, produced a 2021 final report whose recommendations reshaped federal AI policy and helped lay the groundwork for the CHIPS and Science Act. It is little wonder the bill has attracted endorsements from Carnegie Mellon University, the ARM Institute, FANUC America, Agility Robotics, Boston Dynamics, and the Association for Advancing Automation, whose president Jeff Burnstein, rightly observed that the commission “could be the first major step on the road to a U.S. National Robotics Strategy.”

To be sure, a commission must complement, not preclude, more immediate actions. Congress took a useful step by restoring permanent first-year expensing for capital equipment investments, which lowers the after-tax cost of automation. It should now expand the R&D tax credit introduce a 25 percent tax credit for adoption of robotics and other automation technologies.; charge NIST’s Manufacturing Extension Partnership with developing a dedicated robotics adoption initiative; expand robotics technician training programs at America’s community colleges; and direct every federal agency to create a strategy for deploying robotics in service of its mission, an agenda ITIF has detailed in full. The commission’s charge would be to forge these building blocks into a coherent, whole-of-government strategy and to give Congress the analytical foundation and bipartisan consensus needed to fund it at the scale the competition demands.

U.S.-China competition will be less a battle over individual technologies than a clash of entire geo-economic systems, and robotics sits squarely at the center of this. Imagine an America that depends on China for the robots that build its cars, stock its warehouses, and equip its military. That is not an acceptable future. Policymakers should treat robotics leadership not as a niche industrial concern but as a strategic imperative, embrace rather than fear the robots, and pass the National Commission on Robotics Act with alacrity.