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The Trump Organization says it will offer a U.S.-made phone. How might that work?

No major phone manufacturer has built its devices in the U.S. for at least a decade, and there’s not much infrastructure left here.

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Above, an iPhone displays the website for The Trump Organization's mobile phone service and a Trump-branded smartphone.
Above, an iPhone displays the website for The Trump Organization's mobile phone service and a Trump-branded smartphone.
Joe Raedle/Getty Images

The Trump Organization, the president’s family business, is getting into the phone marketplace. The company announced this week it’s unveiling a new wireless service called Trump Mobile and releasing a new smartphone — called the “T-1 Phone,” which is going at a price point of $499.

The Trump Organization says the phone will be made in the U.S. and available starting in August, although industry experts are skeptical as to whether that’s realistic.

No major phone manufacturer has built its devices in the U.S. for at least a decade, according to Roger Entner, founder and lead analyst with Recon Analytics.

“We have made smartphones when we were still in the 2G and maybe in the 3G era,” he said. (Basically the super-great grandparents of today’s phones.)

Phone manufacturers left because it was cheaper to make devices in Asia, Entner said. Now, there’s little infrastructure left here.

“You don't have the machines. You don't have the employees that can do it. You don't have the supply chain,” he said.

According to a Trump Mobile spokesperson, its new phone is gonna be made in Alabama, California, and Florida.

“Look, I think Trump's trying to seize the momentum of ‘Build in the U.S.,’” said Dan Ives, global head of technology research for Wedbush.

But this only works for a limited number of phones, he said. “This is something that could be done at a very, very small scale, and that's probably what they're aiming for. But anything above 20,000, 30,000 40,000 would be very, very difficult for them to actually make in the U.S.” 

To really build out and manufacture the kind of phones consumers want here at a large scale, “for it to even get off the ground would take a long time and significant amount of dollars to put in before they show any sort of profit,” Ives said.

He calls it a non-starter.

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