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That sleek gold phone? It appears to be a photoshopped mock-up, perhaps based on an old iPhone. Even the descriptions of the phone’s specs is shoddy, initially referencing a “5000mAh long life camera”. A long-life camera? It appears that it was supposed to be a reference to the phone’s battery.
Could the Trumps, or someone they contracted, eventually build a smartphone in the US that they can retail for $US499? It’s unlikely, probably impossible.
There is only one phone manufactured in America – by Purism, whose Liberty phone is made almost entirely in the US. The phone, whose selling points are security and privacy, not the functionality and apps associated with Apple and Samsung phones, costs $US1999.
Apple’s latest iPhones cost between $US999 and $US1499 in the US. It is estimated that the costs of entirely manufacturing an iPhone in the US would triple that price tag, with its top-of-the-line models retailing for as much as $US3500.
That’s why, despite Donald Trump’s threat to impose a 25 per cent tariff on Apple and Samsung for phones manufactured offshore as early as next month, there are no signs that Apple is going to deviate from its strategy of making phones for America in India.
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Last week, Donald Trump filed a 200-page disclosure form with the US Office of Government Ethics, detailing his interests in the family’s investment holdings, which range from its lucrative cryptocurrency ventures to hotels, golf resorts, digital trading cards, watches and the Trump-branded “God Bless the USA Bible.”
Some of those ventures, like the crypto interests, a golf course in Vietnam or another in Qatar, raise significant conflicts of interest given that the US regulates crypto (although Trump has deregulated and promoted it and created a strategic reserve of crypto assets) and has extensive trade and geopolitical relationships and interests with some of the countries with which the Trump Organisation is developing business interests.
The mobile phone venture adds to those conflicts of interests, which are far more extensive and substantial than those that sparked controversy during Trump’s first term in office.
Back then, it was relatively modest revenue from foreign officials and US business leaders paying for rooms and services at his Washington hotel, or from the government costs of paying for accommodation for Secret Service teams at his resorts.
Now, it’s many billions of dollars being generated from the family’s crypto and property ventures, along with the gifting of a $US400 million jet by Qatar to Trump’s presidential library.
There were also hundreds of millions of dollars of donations from the crypto and oil and gas industries (and hundreds of millions from now-estranged First Buddy Elon Musk) to last year’s election campaign. Those groups were early beneficiaries of Trump’s executive orders.
It’s all OK, says Trump, because all his businesses and assets are held within a trust managed by his sons – even as he offered a dinner and, for a select few of the biggest buyers of the Trump meme coin, a tour of the White House to boost buying interest in the $TRUMP money.
The biggest buyer of those coins was being prosecuted by the US Securities and Exchange Commission until Trump regained the presidency. He is now an adviser to the Trumps’ World Liberty crypto business.
It doesn’t seem to have occurred to Trump or his sons that launching a mobile phone service from which they will presumably generate license fees and commissions will create more conflicts of interest.
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Mobile phone operators are regulated by the US Federal Communications Commission, headed by Trump appointee and devotee Brendon Carr, who has threatened to block mergers and acquisitions by telcos if they don’t ditch their diversity, equity and inclusion policies, while removing consumer protections within the sector. Trump Mobile will need an FCC license to operate and compete with those carriers.
The Trumps are, of course, shameless. They’re making sure they take full advantage of this term in the White House, which (barring something remarkable) will be their last opportunity to leverage Donald Trump’s presidency and his relationship with the fiercely loyal MAGA adherents for financial gain.
The Trump phone is pitched squarely at the MAGA audience with the premium golden handset (it’s the only available handset at this point), the Trump branding and the “Make America Great Again” slogan prominent in the mock-up, offering his followers an overpriced service based on a false assertion that the phones available at launch – and probably well into the future, perhaps forever – are made in America.
It’s not the first time the devotion of the MAGA crowd to Trump has been exploited by the Trumps, and the Trump Mobile plan probably won’t be the last.
Trump has three-and-a-half years left in office for the family to hoover up whatever it can.
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