Why isn’t Trump’s phone made in the USA?

Where is Trump’s phone? We will continue to talk about it every week. We’re here, as usual, to ask where Trump’s phone is. This week, I’m investigating where it may have been built – and why it wasn’t in the US.

Almost a year after its announcement, Trump’s phone “has taken off.” A few journalists and YouTube users received the first samples of the phone, although it is available limited evidence that buyers will always find theirs. If and when anyone else finds it, they’ll find an open secret: Like Trump’s version is “God Bless the USA”.It’s not really made in the USA.

When Trump Mobile announced its phone in June 2025there were many red flags. It had a strange name: “T1 Phone 8002 (gold color).” The website was vague, including a “5,000mAh long-life” camera. (What?) There were several release dates, all of which were missed. And there was a real catch: The phone had to be “designed and built in the United States.”

The claims did not last long. Within two weeks of the announcement, a The Trump Mobile website has been updated. All (well, almost all) the “made in the USA” claim was challenged. Now Trump’s phone is “proudly American” and has “American hands behind every device,” which means.

We have the Federal Trade Commission to thank. The The FTC regulates it the commercial says that the drug is made in the USA, and the rules are strict: “all essentials” of the drug must be made in the US, and “all or almost all” components must be made in the US. I am too many of mobile devices made in China, India, and Southeast Asia, that’s the problem.

Trump Mobile knows the rules. “There are certain things you have to do to say ‘made in America,'” Don Hendrickson told me when I was there. he spoke with him and fellow director Eric Thomas in February, saying that they had only said it was “purposefully” made in America. When I pointed out that the company said the phone was “made in the USA,” Thomas only admitted that “there may be something else put on the page.”

Thomas added: “If we’re going to build anything in America, it’s going to take a lot of money.”

The company has been sticking to its promise ever since. When that announced last month that the phone will be shipped soon, CEO Pat O’Brien said that the T1 is “proudly assembled in the US.” I was told by Thomas and Hendrickson that the phone goes through a “final meeting” in Miami, though they wouldn’t say exactly what that means. “It’s more than hitting the cover on the phone,” Thomas said, estimating that the calls will reach Miami “let’s say 10 percent.” The requirement to be “assembled in the US” is also regulated by the FTC, but the site is low and vague: Products must pass through a “large assembly” in the US, and the assembly must be “larger,” although the specifics are not well defined. “A simple screwdriver assembly” is not enough to count, but this still leaves room for interpretation.

But if making phones in the US is the goal, why isn’t Trump Mobile already doing it? On that point, everyone I talk to agrees: The United States doesn’t have the means to make phones, in terms of the equipment, the engineering expertise, and the cheap labor needed to produce them on a large scale. “The demand is huge,” said Keith Cochran, who works on iPhone manufacturing at Jabil, one of Apple’s suppliers. It’s a low-cost industry, which doesn’t leave much room for manufacturers to extract higher labor costs from US workers. “You’re being asked to build some of the most complex things in the world to build, in the most direct way you can imagine, on nuts,” says Cochran.

Even if you solve the labor problem, there is currently no equipment or facilities in the US to make mobile phones from scratch. It’s a stumbling block that even Hendrickson admits Trump Mobile ran into. “Some of the manufacturing equipment needed for the phone doesn’t exist in the US,” he told me in February. No one bought it and brought it here. There are U.S. companies that make things like screens and batteries, Thomas adds, but mostly for large-scale production equipment — “it doesn’t go down to the level and quality of the phone.” We are still far from the evolution of high-end chipsets, OLED displays, batteries, modems, camera sensors, and many other complex components inside a smartphone.

There is one company that seems to have managed to make the phone in the US, but it costs $1,999. For the price of the iPhone 17 Pro Max with 2TB of storage, Purism Freedom Phone it offers 4GB of RAM, a single 13-megapixel rear camera, and a 720p LCD screen. Patriotism doesn’t make for a good phone, though he can open the main page. You can see why Trump Mobile went the other way.

Trump Mobile does not disclose where its $499 phone is manufactured. Hendrickson and Thomas, who were closely related, said the phone and its components came from “friendly” or “friendly” countries, and that the goal was to “get as much out of China as possible.”

It is unclear whether the company achieved that goal. Based on its website and design, it seems that the T1 phone is the HTC U24 Pro version of 2024. A few months ago HTC told me that the company “does not make or manufacture third-party phones,” but that doesn’t rule out the potential of the U24 Pro. only it was developed by a third party – after all, HTC sold most of its mobile business to Google in 2017, and its mobile manufacturing capacity has been limited since then.

HTC has declined to comment on when the U24 Pro was manufactured, or by whom. But even though only HTC is from Taiwan, some U24 Pro boxes have “Made in China” logoand Taiwan National Communications Commission certification database refers to Guangdong Yuanchang Electronics Co., Ltd. as mobile phone manufacturers – based, unsurprisingly, in Guangdong, China. If the HTC U24 Pro is made in China, and the T1 Phone is an updated version of the U24 Pro, then…

If you believe in Trump Mobile — although at this point, I’m not sure why you would — there’s hope for things to change. As recently as last month, CEO O’Brien said he wanted to “be the first to release a phone that has the most parts built here in America” ​​(let’s put aside that Purism came first, right?). Hendrickson and Thomas told me the same thing, suggesting that the future version of the T1 could be “completely assembled” in the US, while the high-end model. The price of T1 Ultra it can be completely US made.

The pair touts Trump Mobile as a driving force pushing other manufacturers to bring production lines to the United States, including batteries, displays, and cameras. He said he has US partners ready to make the equipment “within a year,” including Qualcomm, which he told me is “ready to make a chip in Phoenix” for Trump Mobile. I have reached out to Qualcomm for comment.

Making a phone in the US at a reasonable price may be possible one day. Trump Mobile’s “road through the rocks” could be the right way, according to Cochran. “I start by making a box, where there is a telephone connection, and then you can add (a printed community meeting) and start slowly going through the food chain,” he tells me. It’s the Trump Mobile era that doesn’t make much sense.

“Go forward by ten years,” he explains, with the ultimate goal being a phone designed “from day one” to be built in a permanent factory – an easy way around high labor costs. He says recent developments in AI have “expanded how quickly you can build robots,” though he cautions that building them is another question.

Internet analyst Kevin O’Marah points to the same 10-year timeframe, admitting that you’d have to “completely reinvent the phone” to get there. He didn’t comment on anyone’s hopes, Trump Mobile or not, of achieving this within a year: “None of this happens in a year or two,” he says. That is impossible.

Do you have any inside information on Trump Mobile or Trump’s phone? Reach safely from your device to tips@theverge.comor our vision How you can help us page.