With new rounds of U.S. tariffs grabbing headlines, the intertwined fates of American manufacturing and robotics automation are coming into sharper focus. As policy-makers in Washington debate the future of trade with China, companies that build the infrastructure of tomorrow—industrial robots, collaborative machines, the so-called “cobots”—are sorting through both challenges and opportunities.

Brad Porter, CEO and founder of Collaborative Robotics, known as “Cobbot,” has watched the tremors from Washington reverberate on factory floors and supply chain conferences across America over the past month. “It’s interesting. I was at a supply chain conference in Miami when the kind of first news broke… There was a lot of just trying to figure it out. What’s it going to mean? How do we respond?” he said in a recent interview. “Everyone has a globally integrated supply chain… so what’s this going to mean? How do we continue to build robots at a great price for everyone?”

Short-Term Shocks and Long-Term Uncertainties

For Collaborative Robotics, a company focused on deploying human-scale material movement robots in settings from logistics hubs to hospitals, the sudden changes are less dramatic in the short run—much of the sector has been bracing for trade turbulence for years, and some preparations have been made. “The tariff conversation is not new,” Porter said. “We’ve had time to talk to suppliers and kind of prepare.”

But longer-term uncertainty remains a powerful force. About 30% of the components in Cobbot’s robots are currently sourced from China—not the vast majority, but enough that shifts in policy have the potential to reshape cost structures and sourcing strategies. “We have to be cognizant of how those supply chains are shifting,” Porter said. “And make sure that we can continue to build our robots at a great price for everyone.”

Tariffs: Headwinds and Tailwinds for Automation

Tariffs on imported components can impose cost headwinds for domestic robot manufacturers—raising the price of vital servos, circuit boards, sensors, and steel. But in other ways, trade frictions act as tailwinds for the automation industry by reinforcing the case for domestic production and investment in advanced manufacturing.

“In any of these kinds of transformations, there’s headwinds and tailwinds,” Porter said. “As we think about reshoring more manufacturing, that is going to come with a lot of automation and a lot of need for more capable robotics, like we provide.”

With U.S. unemployment rates holding near 4% and worker shortages persistent in fields from logistics to healthcare, automation is being driven by necessity as much as preference. “All of them are struggling to staff to their needs right now,” Porter said, referring to Cobbot’s customer base across sectors. “Part of this is just how are we going to even operate the facilities and have the staffing we need?”

Reality of Robotic Integration: Timelines and Capital

For businesses, automation isn’t the plug-and-play solution some imagine; the timeline to fully implement robotics in greenfield manufacturing plants ranges from two and a half to five years. “When a business decides it wants to build a new operation and plant… it really wants to start generating revenue as soon as possible,” Porter explained. “But there’s a lot of equipment, a lot of technology that has to work together… and those companies that do that really well are often busy as well.”

In some regions, energy and AI data center construction activity are adding further strains on engineering and real-estate capacity. While factories typically locate where skilled labor is available, data centers cluster near cheap energy—the result is sometimes competition for build sites and resources.

Robots as an Answer to Labor and Efficiency Pressures

Robotics investment is rarely just about lowering wage bills. Customers, Porter said, are motivated by a mix of labor constraints, efficiency imperatives, and the drive for higher throughput and quality. “The best practices in lean manufacturing that have evolved over the last 20 to 40 years—you really want predictability. Technology is a way to bring predictability to those process paths.”

Layering artificial intelligence on top, automation’s promise becomes greater. “If the more of the operation is under control of technology… we can then apply software and AI to further optimize that.”

Obstacles: Structural Change and Economic Uncertainty

Yet for many legacy manufacturers, the road to increased automation can be bumpy. Older facilities often weren’t designed with robots in mind, and installing new systems means not just machines, but workforce and management overhauls. “You’re bringing significant technology change. You’re doing a significant amount of workforce practice change… and that may not be how leaders of those facilities are used to operating,” Porter said.

The up-front price tag is another hurdle. New factories can represent “billion dollar plus investments.” Retrofit automation projects can still run from “tens of thousands of dollars to hundreds of thousands, to a few million dollars,” depending on scope. Large, fixed-infrastructure installations, like automated storage and retrieval systems, can run from $10 million and up.

Tariffs and general economic uncertainty cast further doubts on near-term decision making. “Instability, lack of clarity… will cause people to [wait]. When it comes to deploying really, really big dollars and making a really big shift, stability is going to be really important.”

Current high interest rates, as Porter noted, make financing long-term capital projects even less attractive for companies sitting on the fence.

Lower-Cost, Flexible Solutions Gaining Momentum

One notable industry trend: “Robotics as a Service” models are quickly gaining traction, allowing companies to rent robotic capacity via subscription rather than making large capital outlays up front. “That kind of flexibility really helps, particularly as people are adopting new technology,” Porter said. “It makes the economics much easier to calculate versus saying, ‘Hey, we need to put this expenditure down and then amortize it over the next two to five years.’”

Thanks to falling hardware costs and improvements in AI-powered controls, the industry is also seeing movement toward more flexible, less capital-intensive robots—away from complex bolted-down systems and toward mobile, collaborative designs that can work alongside people with minimal infrastructure change. “Flexible robots that can come in and take on work alongside humans without needing to bring in a lot of steel”—that’s where Porter sees growth.

The Humanoid Robot Mirage—and Cobbot’s Niche

Popular imagery often depicts a future filled with humanoid robots, but Porter, who previously led robotics at Amazon, dismisses this as premature. “Humanoids are really exciting from a pure sci-fi technology standpoint… but bipedalism is very complicated technology from a safety standpoint. What we do as humans—the fact that we don’t fall down all the time—is incredibly impressive, but it’s very hard to make a robot that doesn’t [fall].”

Instead, Cobbot has focused on what’s actually needed: robots that roll smoothly on four wheels, sense and navigate complex human-scale environments, and can handle carts, totes, and boxes just like people—but without the fragility or expense of mimicking the human form. The company’s Proxy robot, for example, is already deployed in applications like Maersk’s transload facilities and the Mayo Clinic’s specimen labs, moving hundreds or thousands of carts per day. “Proxy is a robotic building block they can see working in all of their facilities,” Porter said.

Shifting Job Landscape: From Assemblers to Technicians and Engineers

The prospect of a new “job boom” from manufacturing reshoring is nuanced at best. Robots make bringing production back to the U.S. possible at today’s labor costs, but not by restoring 1950s-style blue-collar jobs. “This isn’t going to come back by shifting labor… it’s going to come back with high degrees of automation,” Porter said. “I do think the wave of construction—if we’re building data centers, energy plants, factories—that is going to employ a lot of people… [But] steady state, you know, data centers are massive facilities but don’t employ that many people continuously.”

Manufacturers will increasingly seek robot technicians, software engineers, and robotics specialists—high-skill, high-wage jobs. “In factories, we will be hiring people. We will be hiring robotic technicians and specialists,” Porter noted. In a typical modern auto plant, “there are a lot of robots, a lot of controls engineers writing software… but there aren’t as many people just doing assembly work. Our traditional Ford Model T assembly line, where someone’s putting something in—that’s not really how manufacturing looks today.”

As technology marches forward, the challenge and opportunity for the U.S. become clear: embracing automation not as a means of simply cutting costs but as a way of preserving and expanding advanced domestic manufacturing, even as the structure of the workforce evolves.

Looking Ahead: Navigating Through Uncertainty

How will Collaborative Robotics navigate further tariff or supply chain shocks? Porter suggests relentless engineering is part of the answer: “If a component becomes more expensive, they’ll apply engineering to try to find another solution.” Optimizing the bill of materials, reworking designs for cost, and looking for new sourcing channels are all part of the response.

Tariffs, rising costs, and global uncertainty may make the headlines. But on the ground, in factories, hospitals, and ports, the greater story may be the rise of automation as a pillar of the American industrial base—one project, and one robot, at a time.