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Where's Trump's phone? We continue to discuss it every week. As usual, we contacted Trump and asked about Trump's phone. This week, I am investigating where it might be built — and why it is definitely not the United States.

Why isn't Trump's phone made in America?

T1 Phone only assembles in the United States. It takes a miracle to get here.

Almost a year after the launch, the Trump cell phone has been launched. Some journalists and YouTube users have received early samples of the cell phone, but there is still no evidence that any ordinary buyer has received their cell phone. If others get it, they will find an open secret: like Trump's "God bless America" Bible, it's not really made in America.

When Trump Mobile launched this phone in June 2025, there were dangerous signals. It has a strange name: “T1 Phone 80002 (gold version)”. Specifications are difficult to understand and include “5,000 mAh long-lived cameras”. There were multiple release dates, but it was all missed. And then it's the real lie: the phone is said to be “designed and made in the United States”.

This statement did not last long. Less than two weeks after the announcement, the Trump mobile website was updated. All (well, almost all) words “made in the United States” have been erased. Now, Trump's mobile phone “is proud to be the United States brand” and “there are American hands behind every device”, whatever that means.

We would like to thank the Federal Trade Commission. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission regulates the marketing of products manufactured in the United States, with very strict rules: “all important processing” of products must take place in the United States and “all or almost all” components must be manufactured in the United States. This is a problem because the vast majority of mobile parts are manufactured in China, India and South-East Asia.

Trump Mobile understands the rules. “In order to say ‘American made’, you have to do something,” Don Hendrickson told me when he spoke to his colleague Eric Thomas in February, that he claimed that they only said that it was an American made “target”. When I pointed out that the company clearly claimed that the mobile phone was “made in the United States”, Thomas only admitted that “some things may have been posted on the website”.

"If we're going to build everything in the United States, Thomas adds, "it'll cost more."

Since then, the company has largely maintained its more cautious language. When it was announced last month that the cell phone was about to be shipped, Chief Executive Pat O'Brien simply said that T1 was "assembled in the United States." Thomas and Hendrickson told me that the cell phone would be “finally assembled” in Miami, although he did not specify what that meant. Thomas said, "This is definitely not just a lid on a cell phone." He estimated that the mobile phones had arrived in Miami “in 10 parts”. The claim that “assembly in the United States” is also regulated by the Federal Trade Commission is lower and less clear: the product must be “main assembly” in the United States and assembly must be “substantive”, although the details are not clear. “Simply screwdriver components” are not sufficient to count, but this leaves room for interpretation.

“You are asked to build some of the most difficult things in the world with the highest precision you can imagine.”

But if the goal is to produce mobile phones in the United States, why has Trump Mobile not yet done so? In that regard, everyone I spoke to agreed that the United States did not have the infrastructure to make mobile phones in terms of equipment, engineering expertise and large-scale manufacturing of the affordable labour needed. Keith Cochran told me, "This needs a huge number of people." He was. Apple. One of the suppliers, Jabil, did some iPhone manufacturing work. This is a low-profit business that does not leave much room for manufacturers to absorb higher labour costs for United States employees. "You were asked to build some of the most difficult things in the world, in the most precise way you can imagine," Cochran said.

Even if the labour problem is resolved, there are no facilities or equipment in the United States that can make mobile phones from scratch. Even Hendrickson acknowledged that Trump Mobile was facing this obstacle. “Some of the manufacturing equipment required for this cell phone does not exist in the United States”, he told me in February. "No one bought it and brought it here." Thomas added that there were companies in the United States that produced parts such as touch screens and batteries, but mainly large-scale manufacturing equipment - “they did not take into account the size and quality of mobile phones”. We have a long way to go from the production transfer of flagship chips, OLED monitors, batteries, modems, camera sensors and numerous other complex components in modern mobile phones.

At least one company appears to have successfully produced a mobile phone in the United States at a price of $1,999. For the price of iPhone 17 Pro Max with 2TB storage space, the Liberty Phone of Purism provides 4GBRAM, a single 13 megapixel back-up camera and 720p LCD screen. Patriotism cannot create an excellent cell phone, but it can cost a great deal. You can see why Trump Mobile went in different directions.

Trump Mobile will not reveal the origin of his $499 mobile phone. Hendrickson and Thomas were closest to saying that the mobile phone and its parts came from “beneficiary” or “friendly” countries and that the goal was “to remove as many of them from China as possible”.

It is not clear whether the company has met this target. Based on its specifications and design, T1 Phone appears to be increasingly likely to be an adjusted version of HTC U24 Pro in 2024. A few months ago, HTC told me that the company "does not design or make mobile phones for third parties," but that does not rule out the possibility that U24 Pro itself was made by third parties -- after all, HTC sold most of its smartphone business to them in 2017.GoogleSince then, their cell phone manufacturing capacity has been restricted.

HTC refuses to comment on U24 Pro production sites or producers. However, although HTC itself is a Taiwan manufacturer, some U24 Pro packagings have “Chinese-made” labels on them, and the Taiwan National Communications Commission's authentication database lists Guangdong Yuan Chang Electronics Ltd. as a manufacturer of the mobile phone, with its headquarters in Guangdong, China, as expected. If HTC U24 Pro is made in China and T1 Phone is a modified version of U24 Pro, then, well... This will make you wonder whether China is a “friendly country”.

If you believe in Trump's move — though I am not sure why you believe it — then there is still hope for change. Just last month, CEO O'Brien stated that the company's goal was “to become the first company to issue a mobile phone made in the United States with most of the parts” (let's not talk about Purism getting there first, okay? Hendrickson and Thomas told me similar things, suggesting that future versions of T1 could be “completely assembled” in the United States, while higher-specified T1 Ultra could be entirely made in the United States.

The Trump movement was seen by both as a driving force for other manufacturers to bring the production line to the United States, including batteries, monitors and camera components. They claimed that the United States manufacturing partners were ready to produce parts “within one year” and even to include Chase, who told me that he “will be willing to produce chips for Trump mobile at Phoenix factory”. I have contacted Chase for comments.

“These things will not happen in a year or two.”

One day, it may be possible to produce a reasonably priced mobile phone in the United States. Cockle believes that Trump's moving “stealing stone” may even be the right way. "I'll start with the whole assembly, the cell phone, and then you can add [print circuit board assembly] and gradually start going through the food chain," he told me. Trump's moving schedule sounds unrealistic.

He explained that “this progress will take 10 years” and that the ultimate goal is to design a mobile phone made in a fully automated plant “from the first day” — the simplest way to address the rising cost of labour. He claimed that the recent development of artificial intelligence had “expeded the pace of programming in robotic plants”, but warned that the construction of robots was an entirely different problem.

Kevin O'Marah, a supply chain analyst, suggested the same 10-year time frame and agreed that you had to “re-engineer the cell phone” to achieve this. He spoke out loud about the prospect that anyone (whether Trump moved or any other company) would achieve this feat within a year: “These things will not happen within a year or two”, he said. "That's impossible."

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