行动起来：加强美国机器人产业的政策

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY & INNOVATION FOUNDATION |JULY 2025CONTENTSKey Takeaways................................................................................................................... 1Introduction....................................................................................................................... 3Why Robotics Matters ......................................................................................................... 4Adoption and Production: Where the United States Stands..................................................... 5U.S. Robot Adoption ....................................................................................................... 5U.S. Robot Production..................................................................................................... 7Other Nations’ Robotics Strategies and Policies..................................................................... 9National Strategies.......................................................................................................... 9Tax Credits, Subsidies, and Grants.................................................................................. 11Research Institutes ....................................................................................................... 12Workforce Training ........................................................................................................ 13Adoption Incentives....................................................................................................... 13Policy Recommendations .................................................................................................. 15Better Data, Analytics, and Evidence .............................................................................. 15Scientific and Engineering Research Support................................................................... 16Industry Support ........................................................................................................... 16Adoption ...................................................................................................................... 17Regulatory Issues.......................................................................................................... 19Workforce..................................................................................................................... 20International Considerations........................................................................................... 20Conclusion ...................................................................................................................... 21Endnotes......................................................................................................................... 22 PAGE 2 INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY & INNOVATION FOUNDATION |JULY 2025INTRODUCTIONRobotics is the Rodney Dangerfield of technologies. Compared with artificial intelligence (AI),quantum, blockchain, and all the other “cool kids,” it gets no respect. But that, thankfully, ischanging. An array of technologies are improving and coming together to enable robotics to be akey “general purpose technology” for the next technology long wave.If the United States is to move beyond its anemic levels of productivity growth, applying roboticsto a wide assortment of physical tasks (not just in manufacturing but virtually every industry thatinvolves assembling or moving “things,” including people) will be critical. Robotics is also now akey dual-use technology with important applications in both defense and commercialapplications. Letting China win the robotics competition would be highly problematic, and as theInformation Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) has shown, the People’s Republic ofChina (PRC) is well on its way to global dominance in robotics.As such, national robotics policies should focus on both supporting the development and globalcompetitiveness of the U.S. robotics industry as well as the widespread adoption of robots acrossthe U.S. economy.Other nations, particularly China, have developed and implemented robust national roboticsstrategies. The United States has not. The result has been extremely low rates of roboticsadoption and a lagging national robotics industry. Congress needs to take action to change that.To that end, it has already taken a useful step with the implementation of first-year expensing forequipment investment (in the recent “Big Beautiful Bill”), which will lower the after-tax costs ofrobotics adoption. Ideally, Congress would pass a CHIPS Act-style bill with large ambitions androbust funding for robotics. But this report assumes that is for another day, given the fiscalchallenges facing the federal government. Rather, it lays out a legislative and administrativepolicy agenda for robotics that has a low “price tag.” However, first, the report discusses whyrobotics is important, how the United States is performing, and what othe