How a $2,000 'Made in the USA' Phone Is Manufactured - 404 Media

[justaprogressive]

Earlier this week I wrote an article called “A US-Made iPhone Is Pure Fantasy." The long and short of it is that Trump’s dream of moving all high tech manufacturing to the US is extremely difficult because global supply chains are so intricate, manufacturing expertise exists primarily in China, Vietnam, Cambodia, and other countries, and the components that go into a phone are often made in other countries as well.

But there is currently one smartphone that qualifies for a “Made in the USA” title from the FTC. It’s the Liberty Phone, which is made by a company called Purism. The phone is a version of Purism’s Librem 5. The Made-in-China Librem 5 costs $800, and the Liberty phone costs $2,000. It has 4 GB of memory, and reviewers say that its specs are pretty outdated. Not every single component in the Liberty Phone is made in the USA, but the company has been trying very hard to make it as American-made as possible. The fact that it exists at all is kind of a miracle, and the way that Purism is approaching manufacturing is really interesting, so I called Purism’s founder, Todd Weaver, to talk about smartphone supply chains, making tech products in the United States, and tariffs. Here’s our discussion, which has been edited for length and clarity. The full, hour-long discussion is available here as a bonus episode of the 404 Media podcast:

snip

Todd Weaver: So the first thing is I started the company, Purism, in 2014. The original business plan is actually what we were able to execute on over the course of the last 10 years, and looking at doing a fair number of things different than is currently done.

One of those is US manufacturing for a lot of reasons, secure supply chain, where we get to manage all the components, full transparency, I can also release my schematics. And then that gets us to where we're really targeting that security market as well, because the security market needs to have control and also verify the claims of any technology stack being used. When I started the company, we also did laptops. And then I knew I wanted to get to the point of phones. But I also knew that I had to increment my way there by building laptops first, showcasing that I'm able to do all of that on the hardware, software services side, and then get to the point of the phone. When we did the phone, it was the Librem 5 phone.

https://www.404media.co/how-a-2-000-made-in-the-usa-liberty-phone-phone-is-manufactured/