The Trump Organization made headlines last week when it announced the launch of Trump Mobile, a cell service with plans to release a gold T1 phone in September. One of its selling points, according to the website, is that the T1 phone is “proudly made in America,” though that does not appear it will be the case when the phone launches, among other issues.
An independent phone maker based in San Francisco, however, has been working on the closest thing to a smartphone made almost entirely in the US: the $1,999 Liberty Phone. Purism, which has been around since 2014, says its handset, which has a 5.7-inch screen and runs a proprietary operating system called PureOS, is primarily made in Texas and California with almost all of its manufacturing and assembly done domestically.
The exceptions, according to its website, include a Chinese-made chassis and some chip components sourced to China or India. Its main processor is made by Austin-based NXP and was originally intended for automobiles.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the Liberty Phone’s battery and screen are sourced from China and its rear-facing camera is made in South Korea. That’s likely due to availability: in the case of screens, there aren’t any US manufacturers currently mass-producing smartphone displays
In an email to CNET, Purism founder Todd Weaver said that the Liberty Phone is sold with the label “Made in USA Electronics,” a qualified claim under the rules of the Federal Trade Commission. Weaver expressed doubt that the Trump T1 phone will meet the same standards.
“The FTC takes these claims very seriously and it is my strong belief that enforcement will follow in a timely manner,” Weaver wrote. “No, you cannot put an American flag on a gold-colored back cover and claim Assembled in USA, and certainly not Made in USA.”
A representative for Trump Mobile did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The possibility of American-made phones
The Trump Mobile launch has raised questions as to whether it’s possible to manufacture a smartphone entirely in the US and release it at a price most customers could afford. Nearly all modern smartphones contain parts assembled primarily in China or other countries including South Korea, Vietnam or India.
Weaver told the Journal that his company has sold fewer than 100,000 at a cost to the company of about $650 each and does not expect to compete with the latest iPhone or Samsung devices.
“On the consumer side, it’s security geeks, parents who want a phone for their kid, elderly people or people who want to avoid big tech,” Weaver said of his customers. “Someone who needs a wicked-strong camera is not our audience.”
Some estimates have suggested that if Apple made an iPhone completely in the US, the price of a phone could be as much as $3,500 due to higher costs and the price of building out manufacturing infrastructure.
“We continue to believe that it doesn’t make logistical sense for Apple, or any other smartphone manufacturer for that matter, to mass produce devices in the US,” says Angelo Zino, a vice president and equity analyst at CFRA Research who tracks supply chain data.
In addition to higher costs of labor and fewer semiconductor manufacturers in the US, Zino says that building out what’s needed to make high-end smartphones would be a long-term project.
“The entire global electronics ecosystem spent decades being optimized around Asian manufacturing,” Zino says. To fully return phone manufacturing to the US, he said, “would require rebuilding decades of infrastructure investment ,and can’t be (done) in the matter of months.”
However, high tariffs could cause some device makers to shift some of their production to the United States, he says.
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