Add a gold Trump smartphone and wireless service to the merchandise caravan that includes Trump-labeled watches, digital trading cards, watches, silver commemorative coins, Bibles, gold sneakers, guitars and a cryptocurrency project.
The Trump Organization on Monday unveiled a $499 T1 Phone to be built in the U.S. and Trump Mobile, a $47.75-per-month cellular service plan with unlimited calls, text and data. The new service coincides with the 10-year anniversary of President Donald Trump’s announcement of his first presidential run.
“We want to have customer service by Americans for Americans,” Eric Trump told CBS News. “We want to have phones built by Americans, for Americans, and, you know, and we want to do it better than anybody. We’re going to disrupt the space.”
The organization says the phone will be made in America, but NBC News reported, “The service and phone are not actually made by the Trump Organization. Rather, the company is licensing the president’s name to a separate, unnamed wireless carrier.”
The T1 Phone, scheduled to be available as early as this summer, is a gold-colored device emblazoned with the phrase, “Make America Great Again.” It comes with a fingerprint sensor, the ability to unlock using face recognition, 256 gigabytes of internal storage, and 12gb of RAM. The mobile service can run on U.S. wireless carriers AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon, according to the Trump Organization.
Representatives for the three phone carriers had no comment.
The new smartphone and wireless service is apparently being positioned to compete with phones from Alphabet Inc.’s Google and Apple Inc., which is under relentless pressure from Trump to move iPhone manufacturing to the U.S. from China and India — or face a 25% tariff on Apple products. What remains to be seen is if the Trump phone is made with foreign-made parts. If that is the case, will it too be subject to the same tariff policies from the Trump administration?
The smartphone joins a growing catalog of presidential-themed goods under the Trump Organization, a holding company for the president’s business interests. According to Reuters, the president has reported $600 million worth of income from various deals and projects, including crypto coins.
