Made in America

[yash101]

Whippet has a strong point. If we make all parts in the US, the many hundred teams outside the US will have a disadvantage because everything needs to come from the US. That means there will be forced tariffs and those teams will have to pay more. FIRST is, as Whippet said, an international organization (i don't get why they use USFIRST). It already takes a while for some teams to receive their kits. It would take even longer if they needed to wait for shipping from the US for basic parts. What if they broke a part that they didn't have extras of, the week build season ends? They wouldn't have enough time to order from US, but may be able to go to a hardware store.

Samsung is a company based out of Korea. They produce very powerful mobile processors that can be used onboard the robot to create a high-performance preprocessing system. Out of the US, I can only think of TI as the closest competitor to Samsung for high performance boards, capable of running Linux. Blocking Samsung would create a possible monopoly for TI and it's very powerful A15 chips!

Also, it is important to note that a lot of parts come from China. It is not only cheap, but many parts get the job done successfully.