How a Robotics Company Is Leveraging Its Competitive Advantages to Manage Tariff Disruption

Carnegie Robotics is at the epicenter of the new tariffs and their ripple effects. The 15-year-old Pittsburgh-based company, which manufactures and builds high-tech robotics sensors for industrial use, faces a tricky balancing act. It must navigate a volatile trade environment at the same time its business opportunities are growing.

“Something I’ve learned in the last couple of years of my life is that two things can be true at the same time,” says Carnegie Robotics Chief Operating Officer Grant Gross.

On one hand, the new tariffs under President Donald Trump are “forcing more companies to choose American-based manufacturers. It is giving us an opportunity that hasn’t existed for the last 25 years … I love that it’s driving things back stateside,” he says. However, “the second piece that can be true at the same time is that it’s absolutely making things more difficult for American manufacturers to be competitive.”

Tariff Turmoil

The custom autonomous systems and robotics components that Carnegie Robotics builds and services have a diverse range of applications, including mining, agriculture, construction and DoD military work. Products include stereo cameras for autonomous indoor and outdoor vehicles and global navigation satellite system sensors for precision navigating. Many of the company’s projects have a stereo camera at the core, operating with two or more lenses to detect depth and capture 3D images. This makes the company’s ability to acquire the proper components key.

Acquiring the specialized lenses for these cameras has recently become a challenge with the new tariffs in place. Lenses that are made in China are both lower-cost and higher-quality than those made in the United States, Gross says.

“We’re kind of stuck,” he says. “We’re either going to have to move to a lower-quality lens or just eat the tariff cost and find a way to be creative in how we maintain our pricing.”

At the same time that Carnegie Robotics is dealing with supply-chain challenges around the tariffs, it is poised to benefit from increased demand for its products and services. With more reshoring expected in the U.S., much of the work is likely to be handled by robotics or other automated systems that could benefit from real-time sensor data.

Kearney’s 2025 Reshoring Index survey, conducted in March of this year, “reveals a notable spike in reshoring interest, reinforcing that the desire to build or expand operations in the U.S. is far from fading. The percentage of CEOs planning to reshore part of their operations within the next three years rose by 15% compared to last year’s report.”

Competitive Advantages

With these challenges and opportunities, Gross is using all of Carnegie Robotics’ resources to save money and take advantage of newfound opportunities. As costs rise with new tariffs, he company has a goal of maintaining pricing, seeing value in being a reliable supplier for its customers.

“A lot of manufacturers will immediately say, ‘Well, tariffs increased. We’re going to flow that price onto our customers,’” he says.

One of the most valuable assets to achieving that goal? The company’s people. “I have a team behind me that attacks problems like no other,” he says.

Gross says he needs employees to be analytically thinking through every decision not only to benefit Carnegie Robotics, but its customers as well.

“I like to say ‘We build robots, we don’t employ robots,’” he says.

Gross describes a recent example the company came across while importing product from Canada. An employee was able to recognize that the product qualified for 0% tariff import under the USMCA.

If the company had imported blindly, or had it used an automated system, Carnegie Robotics would have been billed 25%, he says. “But I had the right person in that role that identified ‘This is a thing, and I need to do a little bit of work and save my company 25% on this order.’”

“That’s an example of today—and I don’t know what’s going to be the hurdle of tomorrow or the next week or the next year, but if we have the right people in place, if we’re hiring them, mentoring them, training them effectively, I know we’re going to succeed in the long run,” he says.

Advantages in Customer Diversity

Carnegie Robotics is also seizing the opportunity to use its diversified customer base as a competitive advantage.

“It’s been fortunate for us. When one industry’s down, another one’s up. So, it’s been largely balanced,” he says. “Our trajectory has been more consistent than others.”

Tariffs are giving Carnegie Robotics an opportunity to address difficult problems and improve. “It drives us to get better at lean manufacturing, automation” and finding the right vendors, Gross says.

“It is a new world, and there is certain uncertainty,” he says. “It’s going to come down to who has the right people that are going to be driven and make some hard decisions to stay ahead of the curve.”