- The Trump organization says that a new T1 phone will be released in August
- Apparently it will be “designed and built in the United States”
- But experts say that the phone is more likely to have Chinese origins
Trump Mobile’s T1 phone is undoubtedly one of the strangest phones ever done, mixing odd specifications (a 3.5 mm headphone connector) with which they have no meaning (“5000 mAh long life camera”). However, it also comes with a great statement that it will be “designed and built in the United States.”
Since analysts recently told us that “the idea of making iPhones in the US. It is a section,” is this really possible? Or the manufacturing reality of the “elegant and golden smartphone” will be a bit more complicated?
We ask the experts in the smartphone supply chain for their verdict in the Trump Mobile T1 and if you can really meet those high objectives of “USA.”
With the T1 arriving in August for $ 499, in theory I could steal a thunder of the rumored iPhone 17, but there are good reasons to suspect that Apple will not lose any dream for its unexpected golden rival of Trump Mobile …
The claim
The Trump organization has made some typically bold statements about the T1: it has been announced as the telephone that will cause a new era in the US telephone manufacture.
In a press release, the Trump family company declared that the T1 is “proudly designed and built in the United States for customers who expect the best of their mobile carrier.” In other places, the site states that it has been “built for patriots by the patriots.”
Expanding the statements, Eric Trump declared in the podcast “The Benny Show” that “eventually, all phones can be built in the United States of America.”
However, Trump’s mobile site has the lack of specific details on how and where the Trump T1 phone will be held. According to experts, there are good reasons to suspect that this will be ambitious at best …
Reality
- Experts agree that the Trump phone will not meet their claims “made in the US.”
- It is likely to be a modified Android phone from a Chinese manufacturer
- But Trump T1’s mobile could still meet in the United States
The Trump Mobile T1 will not comply with the strict definition of “Made in the USA” for some reasons, experts say, and this also explain why it is unlikely to transfer the manufacture of iPhone to the United States in the near future.
First, “done in the United States” has a high bar. Professor Tinglong Dai, who teaches at the business school at Johns Hopkins, told us: “The FTC [Federal Trade Commission] It has a strict standard for “made in the US.”: All or almost all pieces and processing must be national. Judging by that standard, the claim is not realistic. “
But there could be ways to avoid that. “The language” built in the United States “of the Trump organization is not an official designation, so there is a lot of room for maneuver to make that statement,” Dai added.
Ben Hatton, market analyst at CCS Insight, agrees. “Our expectation is that the T1 phone will work around this by virtue of the Assembly in the US. Using pieces of other places,” he told us.
On that subject, the Techradar editor in general, Lance Ulanoff, also pointed out: “There is only one company that builds phones in the USA. UU., Purismo. Its specifications do not coincide. Even if it is assembled somewhere in Trump’s castle, they are still obtaining components outside the United States.”
So what phone will the T1 be based? That is still a kind of mystery. “The phone will probably be a modified Android intelligent phone tailored to a Chinese manufacturer,” Ben Hatton of CCS Insight told us. That seems very likely: we try to put the specifications of the T1 in the GSMARENA phone search engine for existing phones, and was blank.
Why can’t phones be done in the United States?
So what does all this mean for the great ambition of manufacturing phones in the United States? And why is it not possible?
“The main challenge is that we do not have a technological supply chain from the end, and the United States lacks the manufacturing capacity for several key components. Even if we do, the lack of qualified workers would be a main bottleneck neck,” Dai explained.
Ben Hatton of CCS Insight agrees that it is unlikely that a real phone “made in the United States” occurs for a long time, if ever. “It is unlikely that the United States has enough work with the appropriate skills so that this can be achieved in another thing that is not in the long term. The costs of labor would go through the ceiling due to this shortage of skills,” he added.
“To be 50 years of evolution of the supply chain again when making companies move the facilities, they would also mean totally remodeling these chains by making the United States the” focal point “instead of China,” he concluded. In other words, it is completely unrealistic and is not compatible with the complexities of smartphones or our globalized technological world.
To summarize that, Professor Tinglong Dai concluded: “A bigger problem is that there really is no totally domestic supply chain.” It is possible that he has read the classic essay, “I, pencil”, even for something as simple as a pencil, is talking about dozens of countries behind him, and that is before the current global era of the supply chain, “he said.
To see the equivalent for an iPhone, see the excellent infographic ‘mapping of the iPhone’ by ArcGIS Storymaps, which shows how complex are the chains of the smartphone supply.
So, although the Trump Mobile T1 can lead to the “Made in the USA” boasting, experts agree that “it will gather in the United States in the United States”, and even that has not yet been officially confirmed before its August launch.
