Trump Mobile’s T1 Phone will instead likely be forced to grapple with international supply chains that rely heavily on China and have been complicated by President Trump’s own tariff regime.
“It is exceptionally difficult to see how a smartphone like the T1 device would be truly made in the U.S.,” said Leo Gebbie, an industry analyst with CSS Insight.
“[For] anyone who digs beneath the surface, it will be incredibly clear that this simply is not a realistic claim and ultimately devices cannot be made in the U.S. because of the strength of the Asia supply chain, which is so far advanced and significantly further ahead of anything that exists in the U.S. at this moment in time,” he added.
The Trump Organization, currently helmed by the president’s sons, announced it would be launching a mobile phone business Monday — the anniversary of Trump’s descent down the golden escalator at Trump Tower, which marked his entrance into politics.
Trump Mobile plans to offer a $47 phone plan, an homage to Trump’s tenure as the 47th president, as well as the golden smartphones. The T1 Phone is meant to go on sale in August for $499.
“You can build these phones in the United States,” Donald Trump Jr., the president’s eldest son, told podcaster Benny Johnson. “We can do it cheaper. We can do it better. And eventually, all the phones can be built in the United States of America. We have to bring manufacturing back here.”
Trump Jr.’s focus on reshoring manufacturing largely lines up with the efforts by his father’s administration, which has repeatedly cited an expansion of U.S. manufacturing capabilities as the driving factor behind its wide-ranging tariff regime.
However, experts have cautioned that bringing smartphone manufacturing back to the U.S. is largely unrealistic, requiring billions of dollars of investment over decades.
“I think it’s a nonstarter that you could produce phones in the U.S.,” Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives said. “Could they produce a few hundred, a few thousand? Possibly.”
“But we don’t see this getting off the ground,” he continued. “And I think they’re going to encounter the same problems that Apple and other smartphone makers have had and why they don’t produce in the U.S.”
Read more in a full report at TheHill.com.
