Washington’s campaign to curb China’s influence over critical technologies has found an unlikely command centre: the US Federal Communications Commission.
Traditionally associated with broadcasting licences, telecommunications regulation and spectrum auctions, the FCC has become one of the Trump administration’s most active instruments for restricting Chinese technology and reshaping American supply chains.
Under chairman Brendan Carr, a prominent Trump ally and outspoken critic of Beijing, the agency has spent the past nine months tightening restrictions on Chinese-made technology entering the US market. Its measures have targeted new models of drones, routers, power inverters and robots, while the FCC has also begun laying the groundwork to prevent Chinese laboratories from certifying electronic products such as smartphones, cameras and computers for use in the United States.
The agency is now preparing another potentially significant step: restrictions on imports of new Chinese-made data-centre components, according to Reuters reporting. The objective is increasingly clear — to reduce dependence on Chinese technology in the infrastructure supporting America's rapidly expanding artificial intelligence industry while encouraging domestic manufacturing.
The approach has the backing of President Donald Trump’s administration, according to US officials. Yet the FCC has sought to present its measures as broader national-security and industrial-policy initiatives rather than an explicit campaign against China.
“Recent FCC actions are global in scope and not targeted against any specific country,” a US official said. “These actions are designed to promote American re-industrialization and ensure our national security.”
Beijing, however, is no longer standing aside.
China announced new restrictions on US-bound drones and technology on Wednesday, alongside sanctions against an American testing and certification company. The measures came after months of resistance to the FCC’s expanding role in restricting Chinese technology.
Chinese officials had sought engagement with the commission, but their efforts were rebuffed, according to two people familiar with the discussions. The FCC declined to comment on the contacts, while the Chinese Embassy in Washington did not respond to requests for comment.
China has repeatedly condemned the FCC’s measures as discriminatory towards Chinese companies and warned that restrictions could disrupt global technology supply chains. Beijing has also pledged to respond with countermeasures.
The confrontation comes at a delicate moment for US-China relations.
Trump is expected to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping in September, with the two leaders likely to discuss ways of stabilising a relationship badly damaged by last year’s tariff confrontation. Historically, such high-level meetings create pressure on both governments to limit provocative actions and reduce the risk of further escalation.
Yet analysts expect the FCC’s campaign to continue.
“Just because the Chinese respond doesn't mean that all of a sudden this is going to stop,” said Chris McGuire, a former Biden administration White House official, pointing to growing frustration in Washington over what US officials see as Beijing’s failure to comply fully with previous agreements.
Washington’s pressure valve
The FCC’s increasingly prominent role is striking because it sits somewhat uneasily alongside the broader direction of Trump’s China policy.
Following last year’s tariff war and the uneasy truce that followed, the administration has taken several steps intended to prevent relations with Beijing from deteriorating further. Washington has eased some restrictions on the export of advanced artificial-intelligence chips to China and delayed approval of a major arms sale to Taiwan.
Against that backdrop, the FCC has emerged as a mechanism for maintaining pressure on Beijing without necessarily reopening the wider trade conflict.
For US policymakers, technology regulation offers a different battlefield. Rather than imposing blanket restrictions on Chinese trade, Washington can target specific technologies regarded as strategically important to national security, telecommunications infrastructure and the emerging AI economy.
Eric Sayers of the American Enterprise Institute argues that the commission has effectively become a central instrument of Washington’s competitive strategy towards Beijing.
“I don't think it's an exaggeration to say FCC has become the center of gravity for competitive actions towards China in this Trump term,” Sayers said.
That transformation is closely associated with Carr.
Appointed FCC chairman in January 2025, Carr has built a reputation as one of Washington’s more outspoken China hawks. He has also attracted controversy through investigations involving major US broadcasters, prompting Democratic lawmakers to accuse him of using regulatory powers to pressure media organisations.
But China has been a defining theme of Carr’s national-security agenda for years.
During a 2022 visit to Taiwan, when he was still an FCC commissioner, Carr accused China’s ruling Communist Party of “brutal authoritarianism” and argued that Washington needed to take a harder line on Beijing’s technological ambitions.
Under his leadership, the FCC has moved well beyond its traditional regulatory remit. The commission is increasingly being used as part of a broader effort to determine which technologies can enter the American market, which companies can participate in critical infrastructure and how much dependence the United States is prepared to tolerate on Chinese supply chains.
The result is an unusual division of labour within the Trump administration: while the White House seeks to keep the wider US-China relationship sufficiently stable for trade negotiations and a possible Trump-Xi summit, the FCC is steadily tightening the technological barriers between the two economies.
For Beijing, the distinction may offer little comfort.
Whether Washington describes the measures as country-neutral industrial policy or national-security regulation, their practical effect is increasingly to make it harder for Chinese technology companies to operate in the American market.
And with both sides now preparing countermeasures, the FCC’s rise from telecommunications regulator to a frontline instrument of US-China competition could prove to be one of the more consequential — and unexpected — developments of Trump’s second term. Photo by ajay_suresh, Wikimedia commons.
