Robotics Executive: U.S. Factories Cannot Scale Without Automation, and China Is Pulling Ahead
A Path Robotics executive tells Fox Business the country lacks the workers to expand manufacturing and lacks a national robotics strategy like China's.
Can America rebuild its factories with the workers it has? One manufacturing executive says no.
Heather Carroll, chief revenue officer at Path Robotics, told Fox Business that robotics will be critical to expanding U.S. manufacturing at scale. Asked whether the country could do it without robots, she said, "We do not have the workforce needed to do that."
She pointed to Saronic Technologies' $3.2 billion Port Alpha shipyard in Brownsville, Texas, as a model. Vice President JD Vance attended its groundbreaking last month. Carroll said it shows automation and advanced technology can be "joined and combined with hiring lots of really good American jobs right here at home."
The China gap. Carroll said China has built a national strategy that ties together government, industry and financing to speed up robotics adoption. "We really lack something similar here in the United States, and it is a competitive disadvantage," she said, adding that the gap between Chinese and American adoption is widening.
Obstacles at home. She listed access to capital, uncertainty about demand and a shortage of workers with the technical skills to deploy the machines. She said advances in AI could lower some of those barriers by making robots easier to deploy.
Welding is her example. An aging workforce faces rising demand from shipbuilding, defense, energy and AI infrastructure. Manufacturers tell her, she said, "We have huge order volumes, but we can't take this work on here, because we can't hire a second shift." One welder, she said, could be trained to run 10 welding robots while still handling more skilled work.
On jobs. Carroll acknowledged worries that AI and robotics could replace workers. Her answer was training: "ways that we can upskill them and provide them opportunities to be part of the workforce."
A note for readers. Carroll works for a robotics company, so she has a business interest in the case she is making. The report is one executive's view, and it does not include figures on worker shortages or on China's adoption. We have not checked her claims against other data.