Trump Mobile has walked away from its most important promise just days after launching — the $499 T1 smartphone will no longer be described as “Made in the USA.”
According to reporting from the Financial Times, the Trump Organization scrubbed the claim from its website and replaced it with vague language like “brought to life right here in the USA” and “designed with American values in mind.”
The change came only a week after the launch event, and now even the shipping timeline is different. The site originally said the device would start shipping in August, but that’s been deleted. It now says the T1 will arrive “later this year.”
The company had originally named Alabama, California, and Florida as the places where the phone would be built. The phone’s specs have also been dialed back. It was first listed as having a 6.78-inch screen, but now it says 6.25 inches.
It also no longer mentions the 12GB of RAM it once claimed. The rollback on both the manufacturing claim and the specs comes after tech experts questioned whether it was even possible to build a competitive smartphone with US-made parts. There’s a reason no major phone company makes its devices in America.
Liberty Mobile handles service and raises more questions
More than 80% of all smartphone components come from China, and even the top players, Apple and Samsung, still rely heavily on Asian factories. Getting something built completely in America is a long game, and Trump Mobile seemed to skip that part.
A formal “Made in America” label from the Federal Trade Commission requires that “all or virtually all” components are manufactured inside the country, which is almost never the case for a phone.
Trump’s push to localize phone production isn’t new. He’s slammed Apple for building iPhones in China and India, threatening 25% tariffs on imported devices. The T1 was supposed to be proof that he could do it differently.
But now, even Eric Trump, who is running the company with his brother Donald Trump Jr., admits the phones will only be made in the US “eventually.” At the launch event in New York, the Trumps brought out Don Hendrickson, Eric Thomas, and Pat O’Brien as executives who would run the company.
They told the crowd the three had “hundreds of years in the mobile space,” but gave no actual information about their backgrounds. Trump Mobile is also tying customers into a monthly mobile plan. The price? $47.45 per month, a reference to Trump’s 45th presidency and hopes for a second full term in office.
The service is being handled by Liberty Mobile Wireless, a Florida-based company created in 2018 by Matt Lopatin, who has a long history of setting up small companies, many of which no longer exist. Liberty is a mobile virtual network operator, which means it doesn’t own its own infrastructure.
It buys capacity from AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon, then resells it under its own brand — a common practice, especially among celebrity-backed services like Mint Mobile.
Doubts grow around the T1’s design and timeline
The T1 phone was originally promised for a September delivery. That looks unlikely now, and nothing on the website confirms a hard date. Trump Mobile staff said the site crashed on launch day because of the high volume of pre-orders, but didn’t share numbers. The design of the phone itself is nearly identical to models sold by Vivo and Umidigi, two low-cost Chinese Android phone makers. There’s no unique hardware or design shown.
Even the few companies that have tried building phones in the US haven’t pulled it off at scale. Todd Weaver, the CEO of Purism, an American electronics company based in California, said building a US phone is slow and expensive.
“When I started, I knew we couldn’t build it immediately,” he said. “When I was going to put out my first phone, we flew to China to look at all the designs and learn the processes.” Today, Purism makes secure phones with a custom OS aimed at niche users like government agencies, but the trade-off is fewer features, fewer apps, and a smaller audience.
The smartphone market itself isn’t easy for mid-tier devices. In 2024, phones priced between $400 and $600 made up less than 5% of the market, down from 9% in 2019. Even Apple’s iPhone 16e, launched in February 2025 for $599, had to work hard to grab budget users. There’s just not much space left in that segment.
As of now, there’s no proof that the T1 meets any of the requirements to be called American-made. The FTC’s standard is clear, “all or virtually all” parts must be from the US, and that means nearly zero imported components.
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Source: https://www.cryptopolitan.com/trump-mobile-ditches-american-made-claim/