Trump Mobile’s Long-Term Viability Questioned by Expert

The Trump Organization’s new phone product may put “America First,” but an expert told Newsweek that brand could face several long-term problems in the U.S. market.

The “Trump Mobile,” which was announced by President Donald Trump’s elder sons on Monday, comes in two parts: a gold phone, and a wireless network provider, both of which present issues to the Trump Organization in a crowded market.

Newsweek has contacted the Trump Organization via email for comment.

The Context

Trump Mobile was first announced on Monday at an event spearheaded by Donald Trump Jr., EVP of the Trump Organization and the president’s eldest son. The pitch is a “purely American-made smartphone” backed by a 5G service through all three major cellular carriers. The “T1” model, coated in gold coloring, is priced at $499, and said to be available by September 2025.

What To Know

The new mobile hardware is not changing anything drastic in the Trump Organization’s playbook. Opulent gold branding and a label closely associated with the president has been a mainstay of the company’s aesthetic for years.

However, an expert told Newsweek that the mobile network industry was a very different beast to the markets the Trump family has traditionally targeted, and that what works in one area might not work in another.

“It is important to distinguish between the phone and the service because the only apparent differentiator between the Trump product is the Trump affiliation,” Professor Kenneth Wong, a marketing expert at the Queen’s University School of Business in Northern Ireland, told Newsweek.

“The difference is that the phone is ‘conspicuously consumed’—if you have one, everyone who sees you with it knows you have it.

“The service, by contrast, is ‘invisibly consumed’. So while the phone’s appeal is potentially ‘augmented’ by the Trump association, the service will be bought on its own merits. And I see few merits.”

Wong said that the Trump branding would do little for a more intangible product like mobile service, especially as the competitors in the space already have advanced infrastructure that the Trump Organization could struggle to match.

Trump Mobile plans to offer a plan at $47.45 a month, in reference to its namesake’s status as the 47th and 45th president.

“I do not see anything distinctive about the service: in fact, since mobile service is generally bought on the basis of price and reliability and coverage, such as how many bars, the Trump service is a weak competitor,” Wong said.

“Will it sell? Of course it will…but not necessarily in big numbers. Celebrities like the Korean boyband (KT) Justin Bieber (donuts) and Ryan Reynolds (breakfast fast food) have received big waves of initial sales based on fan support and people ‘investing’ in the hope the containers become collectibles.

“But those sales don’t sustain for very long. I see an initial wave of acceptance from Trump’s biggest fans and supporters and ‘investors,’ but not much beyond that.”

Furthermore, the claim that the phone will be manufactured in America has raised eyebrows over the price of the phone, advertised at $499.

Tinglong Dai, a supply chain expert and professor at the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School, told Newsweek: “a phone truly made in the U.S. today would likely cost well over $1,000. Without access to Asia-based manufacturing and scale, the economics simply don’t work.”

A similar issue was raised earlier in Trump’s second term, when the president put pressure on Apple to move iPhone manufacturing entirely to the U.S. However, complex technology like smartphones requires both international supply chains and a wealth of tech talent—which the U.S. does not have on the same scale as other countries.

The popular conception is that companies go to China because of low labor costs, Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO, said in 2018 when asked why he did not manufacture iPhones in the U.S., as Trump wants to do.

“China stopped being the low labor cost country many years ago and that is not the reason to come to China from a supply point of view.

“The products we do require really advanced tooling. And the precision that you have to have in tooling and working with the materials that we do are state-of-the-art. And the tooling skill is very deep here.

“In the U.S. you could have a meeting of tooling engineers and I’m not sure we could fill the room. In China you could fill multiple football fields.”