Trump Mobile: Can the T1 Phone Really Be Made in the U.S.?
President Trump’s family is launching a new smartphone, the T1 Phone, alongside its own wireless service called Trump Mobile. One of the main selling points of the $499 device is that it will be made in America.
However, the announcement, made by Eric and Donald Trump Jr. on Monday, leaves many questions unanswered—chief among them, how the company actually plans to manufacture a smartphone in the U.S.
Trump Mobile says the T1 Phone will launch in September. But industry experts are skeptical that the device can be produced domestically by then—or anytime soon.
Francisco Jeronimo, an analyst at IDC, believes the T1 will likely be based on an existing phone made overseas.
“Smartphones are not like you decide to print a few more T-shirts or a few [types of] other merchandise,” Jeronimo told Yahoo Finance. “They are complex products. So first, I doubt they are manufacturing or building phones themselves.”
He added, “This looks like a typical white label product that you go to change and buy it from someone, put the logo on top, but that’s it.”
Blake Przesmicki of Counterpoint Research offered a similar view via email, saying the device “is likely that this device will be initially produced by a Chinese [original device manufacturer].”
Todd Weaver, creator of Purism’s Liberty Phone—a privacy-focused smartphone built with U.S.-made electronics—said it took his company years to establish the facilities and source components necessary to ensure the phone’s processing and communication parts all come from America.
“There’s a lot of challenges, many years, to even get to the scale that we’re at, which is only thousands of phones and not hundreds of thousands of phones,” he told Yahoo Finance.
During an interview with conservative YouTuber Benny Johnson, Eric Trump showed off what he called a golden Trump phone, which bore a strong resemblance to an iPhone.
Trump later said, “Eventually all the phones can be built in the United States of America.”
Yahoo Finance reached out to Trump Mobile for clarification on where the phone would be made but received no response by deadline.
According to Trump Mobile’s website, the T1 Phone features a 6.8-inch AMOLED display and 256GB of storage. The site oddly lists its RAM as 12GB of storage, confusing two different types of memory.
The phone also includes a triple-lens camera system with a 50MP main sensor, a 2MP depth sensor, and a 2MP macro lens. Earlier reports mistakenly claimed the phone would have a “5,000mAh camera,” which is actually a battery specification, not a camera feature. The Android-powered T1 also has a 3.5mm headphone jack and USB-C port.
Weaver noted these specs closely resemble those of the Revvl 7, a phone currently sold by T-Mobile’s Metro brand, which itself is a version of the Chinese-made Wingtech Revvl 7.
The Trump administration has prioritized making devices in America as part of its economic strategy. This included imposing tariffs as high as 145% on China-made products like smartphones, laptops, and desktops—although exemptions were eventually granted.
More recently, Trump criticized Apple CEO Tim Cook for shifting manufacturing from China to countries like India. Last month, the president threatened a 25% tariff on Apple’s iPhones and Samsung phones if production isn’t moved to the U.S.
Industry analysts say manufacturing smartphones domestically would be a monumental challenge, requiring years to build factories and train workers—making a September launch all the more ambitious.
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