US Pulls Electronics Testing Out of China as FCC Ends Recognition of Chinese Labs

The US Federal Communications Commission voted on October 29, 2026 to stop recognizing electronics test labs located in mainland China and in any other economy that does not grant reciprocal treatment to American labs. The three sitting Republican commissioners adopted the order unanimously, 3-0. From December 1, 2028, the testing, certification and accreditation work behind every new FCC equipment authorization will have to take place in the United States or in a reciprocal economy. The decision reshapes a compliance step that nearly every smartphone, laptop, router, camera, drone and wireless gadget sold in America must pass before it reaches store shelves.

The scale of the change is considerable. According to FCC Chair Brendan Carr, labs in China handled 82.3% of the testing for devices seeking FCC approval in 2025, while labs inside the United States handled only 3.6%. Out of roughly 46,400 equipment authorization applications filed last year, more than 38,000 relied on Chinese laboratories. The FCC draft order counted 609 recognized test labs worldwide, with 25.1% located in China, 18.4% in Taiwan and 17.9% in the United States. The gap between the number of American labs and the tiny share of work they win reflects price competition more than a lack of facilities. The trend has reversed sharply over two decades, since in 2007 US labs carried about 31% of FCC applications against roughly 13% for Chinese labs.

Carr justified the rule on both security and fairness grounds. He described test labs as a critical gateway into American communications infrastructure, noting that they receive confidential technical details about products months before launch. In his view, a compromised lab could clear unsafe equipment, help sabotage networks or leak trade secrets, and the FCC has no real oversight or enforcement power over facilities in countries that refuse reciprocal arrangements. He also argued that concentrating the bulk of US-bound testing in a single country leaves the supply chain exposed, and that the rule restores the framework the agency followed three decades ago, before it dropped its reciprocity requirement in 2015.

The new rule goes further than the Bad Labs rules adopted in May 2025, which targeted laboratories owned or controlled by foreign adversary governments or by companies on the FCC Covered List. That earlier crackdown, launched after regulators discovered in 2024 that Huawei held FCC recognition for one of its labs, has removed about 30 facilities from the program, a figure Carr put at 32 during the October 29 meeting. Most China-based labs, however, remained eligible because they were not state-owned. The October order changes the test from ownership to location. A Western testing group operating a site in Shenzhen or Shanghai will lose recognition for that site just like a Chinese-owned lab, and a recognized lab will not be allowed to keep its headquarters in a reciprocal country while performing the actual measurements, technical analysis or test reports inside a non-reciprocal one.

The list of reciprocal economies attached to the order covers more than 60 territories, including Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, Vietnam and the members of existing mutual recognition agreements with the United States. Mainland China is not on it. The FCC said it will keep the list updated and left the door open to a future bilateral agreement with Beijing.

The transition is designed to avoid an immediate shock. Labs in China keep their recognition until the December 1, 2028 cutoff, and the FCC Office of Engineering and Technology can still grant new recognitions to them, but every one of those will expire on that same date. Equipment authorizations granted before the deadline remain valid, and the order does not require retesting of devices already on the market. The agency plans to publish implementation guidance on pending applications. At the same time, the FCC created a streamlined approval path for devices tested in US labs or in labs from trusted economies, and opened a further consultation on stronger lab ownership checks, protection of intellectual property, oversight of products already sold and ways to rebuild testing capacity inside the United States.

Beijing responded quickly. On October 30, China's Ministry of Commerce said it firmly opposes the decision and urged Washington to revoke the measures immediately. The ministry accused the FCC of abandoning technology neutrality, overstretching the concept of national security and breaking the consensus reached by the two countries' leaders. It said China had proposed negotiating a bilateral mutual recognition agreement but described the US attitude as extremely passive. The ministry warned that forced reshoring of testing will raise costs and lengthen product cycles at the expense of American companies and consumers, and promised further countermeasures if the US keeps acting unilaterally. China has already retaliated against earlier FCC moves. On August 5, 2026, it placed Arizona-based Compliance Testing LLC on its countermeasure list, barring Chinese organizations and individuals from doing business with the firm, and it also tightened export controls on drones and related technology bound for the United States.

The vote comes after a long escalation. The FCC first proposed the location-based ban on April 30, 2026, triggering immediate protests from Beijing, and Carr scheduled the final vote on October 7. Over the past year the agency has also banned imports of new Chinese drone models in December 2025 and new Chinese-made consumer router models in March 2026. The test lab decision lands shortly before an expected meeting between President Trump and President Xi, adding a new irritant to an already tense trade relationship.

For electronics makers, the main concern is cost and time. A basic FCC test costs between $400 and $1,300 in China but between $3,000 and $4,000 in a US lab, according to industry estimates, and Compliance Testing executives have themselves acknowledged that mainland labs charge 30% to 70% less than American ones. Shipping samples abroad can take two weeks, and with lab queues and retests a full certification round can stretch beyond a month. For short-lived consumer gadgets, a delay of one or two months can erase a large part of a product's sales window. Small and mid-sized manufacturers in Shenzhen and Dongguan, which often rely on quick and cheap local testing, are expected to face the heaviest burden.

The practical question now is capacity. Labs in the United States, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, Vietnam and Hong Kong are likely to see demand climb steadily as the 2028 deadline approaches, and analysts expect booking delays if new capacity does not come online fast enough. Some manufacturers may keep production in China and accept higher logistics costs for shipping prototypes to foreign labs, while others could use the shift as another reason to move assembly lines to Southeast Asia, closer to eligible testing centers. Chinese testing groups, for their part, face a sharp contraction of their US business unless they open facilities abroad. With just over two years left before the cutoff, the reorganization of the global electronics certification chain has started, and the outcome will depend on whether Washington and Beijing find a negotiated path or keep trading new restrictions.