Originally published in Svenska Dagbladet by Björn Jeffery, June 17, 2025
While Donald Trump tries to get Apple to move iPhone factories to the US, his sons have created an American competitor. But is it even possible to manufacture mobile phones in the US?
A gold-coloured mobile phone, “made in America.”
That is the Trump Organization family company’s new promise ahead of the autumn. The phone is to be sold by the newly launched mobile operator Trump Mobile and is said to cost just under 5,000 kronor. According to the company, the phone, named the T1, will be “proudly designed and manufactured in the USA.”
Donald Trump has among other things criticised Apple for not moving iPhone production to the US. Now his sons, Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr., as those responsible for Trump Mobile, have the opportunity to show how it would be done. Many critical voices have been raised immediately, asking the obvious question: is it even possible at the moment?
The short answer is: probably not.
A more nuanced answer would be that it depends on how one defines the concept of “manufacturing.” That very question is also at the centre of Trump’s wish to bring more manufacturing industry back to the US. What is he actually referring to?
A mobile phone consists of a large number of different components — screen, memory, camera, battery and so on — which are then assembled to create the phone that is later sold in shops. The individual components are often made by subcontractors. Apple, for example, does not manufacture all its screens itself, but purchases them from companies like LG and Samsung. In that case, manufacturing happens in South Korea.
Looking at batteries, they often come from China, while the storage memory in an iPhone is manufactured in Japan. It is rather like a global construction kit where each part has its own origin.
Then there are the machines required to create each individual component. Dutch ASML, for example, sells lithography machines to Taiwan’s TSMC, which in turn makes processors.
What does “made in America” even mean when the supply chain for a mobile phone looks like this?
Tinglong Dai, a professor at Johns Hopkins business school, described the possibility of doing this in the US to the Wall Street Journal as follows:
“There is absolutely no way to manufacture the screen, source the memory, camera, battery, everything.”
He also added that it would take “at least five years” to set up anything similar in the US.
But let us take the most generous interpretation of the concept of “manufacturing.” We allow all the global subcontractors to stay where they are, but we assemble everything on American soil.
When the Wall Street Journal looked at exactly this scenario for the iPhone, they found that such a move would mean ten times higher costs for Apple. From 300 kronor to 3,000 kronor per phone. It is possible, but it becomes expensive. And that does not even include the cost of setting up this large-scale assembly operation in the US. Factories, machinery and staff are required to make it happen.
Trump’s promised phone is, however, not expensive. It is to cost less than half of what Apple’s latest iPhone costs, but contain components that in many cases are equivalent. The T1 phone is said to have a larger battery and more internal memory than the iPhone. And on top of that, be American.
In autumn, the gold-coloured phone is to go on sale, and only then will we know exactly who is behind each component. But a not particularly bold guess is that it is a Chinese phone at its core, with some minor steps completed on American soil. The Trump family may come to realise that what sounds good as a slogan — “made in America!” — does not always work equally well as a business strategy.
