A new smartphone under President Donald Trump‘s brand, which was unveiled by his eldest sons on Monday, will cost well above its advertised price of $499 if it is indeed manufactured in the U.S., experts have told Newsweek.
“A phone truly made in the U.S. today would likely cost well over $1,000,” said Tinglong Dai, a supply chain expert and professor at the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School. “Without access to Asia-based manufacturing and scale, the economics simply don’t work.”
Newsweek has reached out to Trump Mobile, the company behind the phone and new cellular service, for details on where the T1 smartphone will be manufactured.
Why It Matters
Trump and his administration have already put a significant political and economic premium on companies manufacturing in the U.S.—this being one of the principal goals of his trade agenda—while threatening companies who refuse to relocate production with punitive tariffs.
Experts have already cast significant doubt the claim made by the Trump Organization and its representatives that the new T1 smartphone, set for launch in a few weeks, can or will be made in America. They have pointed to the marked disparity in labor costs between the U.S. and China, as well as the latter’s heavily developed and specialized industrial ecosystem, tailor-made for the mass assembly of such technologies.
What To Know
On Monday, The Trump Organization, the umbrella company for the president’s business ventures now managed by his sons Eric and Donald Jr., announced the launch of T1 Mobile, a full-suite cellular service managed by the newly formed Trump Mobile and aimed at America’s “hardest-working people.”
While customers are able to switch onto this service—and its flagship “47 Plan”—with their current devices, the company also unveiled the T1 Phone, described as a “sleek, gold smartphone…proudly designed and built in the United States.”
On the Trump Mobile website, the phone is similarly billed as “MADE IN THE USA,” and available for pre-order ahead of its September release, with a price tag of $499 and a down payment of $100.
In an interview with conservative host Benny Johnson, Eric Trump said that the phones could be manufactured domestically, and that “eventually, all the phones will be built in the United States.” A spokesperson for the Trump Organization told The Wall Street Journal that production “will be in Alabama, California and Florida.”
Currently, the only company manufacturing smartphones entirely within the U.S. is Purism, whose Liberty Phone is produced at its facility in Carlsbad, California, and retails for $1,999.
In an interview with 404 Media published in April, Purism’s founder and CEO Todd Weaver said that the smartphone relied on the use of certain imported components and leveraged knowledge gained from consultations with Chinese designers and manufacturers. Weaver also noted the superior technical knowledge in China, telling the outlet: “You could count the number of skilled electronics engineers on U.S. soil, and there’s probably a million in Shenzhen alone.”
As experts told CNN, images of the new T1 phone closely resemble many already available on the market, including the Revvl 7 Pro 5G, designed and made by Jiaxing, China-based firm Wingtech Technology.
Robert D. Atkinson, founder and president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF), a D.C.-based think tank, told Newsweek that the only way for Trump Mobile to follow through on its promise of an American-made smartphone would be to “build a highly automated factory,” otherwise high labor costs would make it “very hard, if not impossible to keep the price under $500.”
He added that it would only make sense to construct such a factory if sales were sizeable, given the capital required for equipment and software, but that it was still possible.
“The Trump Organization could easily find a company, like Rockwell automation, to build them a highly automated factory,” he said. ” And the skills to operate it could be developed, especially if there was a community/technical college nearby that established a training program.”
Dai similarly said a U.S.-made phone could be possible, albeit “in the very long run,” and that doing so by its advertised September launch “without a working prototype or supply chain in place, would take nothing short of a miracle.”
He added that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) places stringent requirements on companies who wish to put the “Made in USA” label on their products.
According to FTC guidelines, this can only be done if “the final assembly or processing of the product occurs in the United States, all significant processing that goes into the product occurs in the United States, and all or virtually all ingredients or components of the product are made and sourced in the United States.”
What People Are Saying
Economist Susan Helper told Newsweek that it was currently “not feasible” to make phones in the U.S., “but if we wanted to build toward this, we could make them (or next generation) here in say five to 10 years.”
She added that using U.S. strengths, such as 3D printing—”rather than millions of people screwing in tiny screws”—the final product “wouldn’t necessarily be so much more expensive.”
Todd Weaver, CEO of Purism, told CNN: “Unless the Trump family secretly built out a secure, onshore or nearshore (fabrication) operation over years of work without anyone noticing, it’s simply not possible to deliver what they’re promising.”
What Happens Next?
Alongside lingering questions over the origin of the T1, and its reliance on imported components, Trump Mobile and the Trump Organization have provided conflicting details on the official launch date: the former listing this as August, and the latter as September.
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