‘convenient Cudgel’: The Trump Agency Taking A Tough Line On China

Brendan Carr is best known for trying to take down Jimmy Kimmel. Now the Federal Communication Commission chair is going after another foe of President Donald Trump: China.

The FCC has in the past nine months blocked imports of new foreign-made drones, routers, humanoid robots and other cutting-edge technology that China supplies to the globe — an unprecedented expansion of the agency’s intervention into global trade.

The agency’s bans come as other parts of the Trump administration, including the Commerce Department, have pulled their punches on China in a bid to maintain a fragile trade detente that Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping reached last fall. But the FCC’s emerging national security role and unique perch as a technical telecom regulator offer Trump a convenient foil to keep pressure on Beijing while avoiding another all-out trade conflict, according to four trade experts.

“Many officials at the FCC have been wanting to take these national security measures for a long time, and they have the legal authority to do so,” said Nazak Nikakhtar, a former Commerce Department official in Trump’s first term and partner at the law firm Wiley. “The president seems to trust Brendan Carr, so he's giving Carr the national security runway he needs to operate.”

The Trump administration and the Chinese government extended a nearly yearlong trade truce this week ahead of Xi's visit to the White House. But ongoing negotiations ahead of the new, January deadline will test how much Trump can continue using the FCC as his “bad cop” or whether China intends to push back harder on the import measures, as it has with other U.S. policies.

If the FCC’s bans remain in place, they could loosen China’s stranglehold on key technological supply chains in the coming years. But the short-term effects are worrying U.S. businesses wary of a supercharged trade power without the clear-cut rules of longer-running trade protections.

The 92-year-old agency’s power over imports comes from its longstanding role in authorizing communications equipment for use in the U.S. It can use this authority to block imports of gear deemed risky by national security agencies, a role Congress sketched out in two communications security laws enacted earlier this decade.

U.S. officials seized on those powers during Trump’s first term to thwart Chinese telecom giants Huawei and ZTE, an effort that continued under the Biden administration. The U.S. ultimately paid billions of dollars to rip out and replace Huawei and ZTE gear from domestic networks.

Some FCC officials and China hawks in Washington are encouraging the agency to use this muscle even more, particularly as the U.S. warns of China’s chokeholds on key supply chains — everything from neodymium magnets that help power drones to lithium refineries essential for electric vehicle batteries.

House Select Committee on China Chair John Moolenaar (R-Mich.) told POLITICO the U.S. now “must be proactive in securing American technology and innovation to challenge China’s dominance in certain industries and avoid another expensive ‘rip and replace’ scenario.”

Industry leaders believe the administration is seizing on FCC powers as a novel, easy way to thwart Chinese threats. Unlike more traditional tariffs, the FCC’s ability to institute a blanket ban makes it a faster way to cut off imports.

“That's what it's become: The FCC is a convenient cudgel by which to impose these restrictions by other means,” Erik Nieves, a Texas robotics CEO, said in an interview. “The FCC would have had no role in this 20 years ago.”

Although Trump’s national security agencies decide the FCC import bans, Carr has embraced the national security mission across several proceedings and repeatedly talked up the potential benefits for domestic manufacturing and jobs.

He formed a national security council within the agency last year and has prioritized a clampdown on China-based equipment testing labs and overseas call centers in addition to the import bans. He has also moved to tighten the security rules governing undersea cables moving data around the globe.

“I think this is momentum continuing to build towards the realization that when it comes to tech and telecom in our networks, there are bad actors and foreign adversaries that are constantly poking and prodding and looking for ways in,” Carr said at an August news conference, noting the focus has been consistent across recent Democratic and Republican administrations. “We are constantly ramping up our work.”

The actions are notable, however, given the slowdown at other parts of the executive branch tasked with guarding U.S. tech against foreign adversaries like China.

The Commerce Department’s Bureau of Information and Security has drawn complaints from China policy hawks and lawmakers of both parties for failing to issue new rules or update its export blacklist — key tools for keeping sensitive technology out of Beijing’s hands — after its several 2025 measures drew heavy Chinese retaliation. Trump administration tariff investigations are ongoing, but potential duties on items where China is most dominant — such as semiconductors and drones — have been put off until after the Trump-Xi summit.

“The FCC's actions stand out within the administration as odd because they've quashed almost everything else,” said Derek Scissors, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute who advised Trump on China policy in his first term.

But an FCC official, granted anonymity to share Carr’s thinking, emphasized that the agency “is in lockstep” with the administration in its recent national security determinations and noted the actions are country-neutral.

The White House says it is using a broad array of tools to counter threats.

“The administration is committed to using every tool at our disposal to safeguard America’s national and economic security, and every facet of the executive branch is successfully implementing the President’s reindustrialization agenda,” a White House official said in a statement.

The Chinese government has criticized the FCC’s actions but has taken only limited measures against U.S. businesses like limiting exports of drones — a muted response compared to its move temporarily cutting off the flow of critical minerals last fall after the Commerce Department expanded its trade blacklist.

“China urges the United States to heed the objective and rational voices of the business communities in both countries, abandon its hegemonic mindset, and stop smearing Chinese companies and threatening them with sanctions,” said Liu Chang, a spokesperson for the Chinese embassy.

Companies that know how to navigate the government’s more traditional measures to regulate trade have been surprised by the timing and scope of some of the FCC’s import bans and struggled to understand how far-reaching they are. The administration has allowed companies to seek waivers in exchange for onshoring commitments and granted several throughout the year, at times exempting whole categories like toy drones.

Industry officials told POLITICO that although the administration has sought to engage on these national security matters, they don’t always know what bans will come next or have a chance to weigh in ahead of time. And the number of blocked technologies is rising, now including advanced humanoid robotics and power inverters. Some officials believe the administration could soon block foreign-made gear used in data centers, central to expanding artificial intelligence.

“It's a little bit, I would say, a black box,” said Melissa Newman, vice president of government affairs at the Telecommunications Industry Association. “We want more structure to this process.”

Anna Gomez, the lone Democratic FCC commissioner, has said she’s heard from U.S. companies alarmed about “the haphazard way, the chaotic way” bans have emerged. She told reporters after the agency’s August meeting that companies need clearer guidance.

Matt Schruers, CEO of the Computer & Communications Industry Association, worries about how far Carr may take the national security mantle, pointing to proposals the agency is considering that could inject officials into policing the online marketplace. He said the administration risks igniting trade wars with its allies, and his group recently cautioned that the agency’s actions could cost U.S. companies up to $7.7 billion over the next five years.

“These orders take the agency from regulating technical compliance of specific communications equipment into an overarching regulator of global supply chains,” said Schruers, who sees dire consequences for customers. “No matter what populist veneer you put on a strategy of reindustrializing the U.S. through compliance burdens, consumers stand to lose.”

Some bipartisan pushback bubbled up on Capitol Hill Wednesday from House Energy and Commerce Chair Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.) and ranking member Frank Pallone (D-N.J.), who introduced legislation to boost congressional oversight of what type of risky foreign technology gets blocked and streamline and clarify the process.

Carr said the administration is attempting to avoid jarring changes by not applying bans to products already in the United States. He and agency officials say their actions are already spurring more domestic manufacturing in technologies like drones and power inverters. The FCC official said the drone ban led to $5 billion in domestic investment, 5,000 new U.S. jobs and 2 million new square feet of manufacturing facilities.

The U.S. will ultimately need a broad coalition of industry and overseas allies to counter its adversaries, said Keith Krach, who served as an under secretary of state during Trump’s first term and welcomes the FCC’s strengthened role.

“If you look at national security and the threats that we face from authoritarian regimes, the United States can't take it on alone,” Krach said. “We want our allies. We want our private sector.”

Some of Carr’s pro-Trump allies say the president is doing what he has long promised.

Aiden Buzzetti, president of the Bull Moose Project advocacy group, said that limiting sales of Chinese products is a “no brainer” that fosters domestic manufacturing. He downplayed U.S. business qualms as necessary growing pains.

“The government isn't here to make sure that these specific people get to pay less with more dangerous goods,” Buzzetti said. “President Trump, especially the last election but even when he was running in 2016, talked a lot about bringing back manufacturing and jobs and tapped into this voter that has been affected by the decades-long devastation of our industrial base.”

Phelim Kine contributed to this report.