One of Donald Trump’s biggest goals as president is to increase domestic manufacturing and reshore supply chains so that the most in-demand technologies in the world can be 100 percent made in the United States.
By executive order last December, he launched his “Genesis Mission,” an ambitious plan seeking to leverage US dominance in AI to maintain or seize an edge in advanced robotics, biotechnology, semiconductors, and nuclear technologies. And according to Trump, that plan works best with self-sustaining supply chains. Not even neighboring countries or longtime allies should be relied upon to manufacture a single component of any US product in his ideal world.
The Consumer Technology Association (CTA) has long warned that Trump’s reshoring goals are not grounded in reality, but only recently has America’s largest technology trade association attempted to estimate what it would cost businesses and consumers to follow through on Trump’s plan.
“It is no longer enough to say that reshoring is difficult,” the CTA acknowledged. “The practical questions are what it would cost, product by product, what it would physically require, and who would pay for it.”
In new research shared with members this week, the CTA warned that reaching full US production of 10 categories of products most commonly found in US homes by 2031 “would require between $185 and $230 billion in capital expenditure, 555,000 to 668,000 additional full-time employees, and 19.1-19.5 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity per year.”
While the costs are eye-popping, the labor demand might be the bigger problem, requiring more than double the “existing US computer and electronics manufacturing workforce,” the CTA said. Additionally, the energy demand required to reshore all supply chains at once would clash with huge energy needs of AI data centers over the same time period.
Product categories included computer monitors, laptops, robotic vacuums, smart speakers, smartphones, smartwatches, televisions, video game consoles, wireless earbuds, and wireless headphones.
Smartphones are in a “league of their own,” the CTA said, emerging as the most expensive product to make in the US and the product that Americans consider least dispensable. Taking into account tariffs in place today, the cost of fully manufacturing a smartphone in the US would go up by 152 percent, CTA estimated, and some of those costs would inevitably have to be covered by consumers to maintain profit margins and keep investors happy.
The largest cost increases would be in products with processors, memory, and advanced displays, the CTA said. Building laptops would cost 93 percent more, and smartwatches 97 percent more. On the lower end of the spectrum, TVs would cost 41 percent more to build entirely in the US.
In this scenario, most tech companies wouldn’t immediately pass all extra costs on to their customers. But any big leaps in pricing could hurt Americans already pinching pennies. CTA’s research indicated that between 25 to 50 percent of the cost increase could be passed on.
On average, CTA estimated that “the 10 products in our report would see a weighted average price increase of 27 to 55 percent.” For the most cash-vulnerable and value-seeking US families, that could quickly add up as the devices they depend on wear down.
“A household replacing a phone, a laptop, and a television over a typical replacement cycle would face that increase on each purchase,” the CTA reported.
Households already facing budget strains—including rising costs of rent, groceries, and fuel—are already delaying technology purchases until prices come down in the US, the CTA reported. And while most people are unwilling to go without smartphones for very long, the fewer products that tech companies can sell over time, the worse their margins will get as they continue to absorb higher costs. As returns diminish, that could spook investors, the CTA suggested, making it even harder to reshore supply chains, despite Trump insisting that reshoring will ultimately attract more investment in the US. With each product category taking years to fully reshore, the jury is out on how many businesses could afford that, the CTA suggested.
Trump unlikely to embrace CTA’s alternative plan
Instead of rushing companies to invest in domestic manufacturing on expedited timelines that hardly anybody can afford, the CTA recommended a “first step” that could help tech firms manage costs while pursuing some reshoring.
If the US focused only on reshoring the assembly part of manufacturing—rather than reshoring the manufacturing of every component—firms’ costs would be substantially less, estimated between $16 and $19 billion.
In that scenario, the cost of manufacturing smartphones would still rise by 67 percent, CTA estimated, and laptops by 50 percent. But for businesses, that’s a comparably lower cost impact that allows them to perhaps avoid price increases while continuing working with “trusted trading partners, suppliers, and allies to secure component access,” until they can bring the full supply chain into the US.
To further the success of that scenario, the CTA suggested that Trump pump the brakes on imposing tariffs on component parts—at the very least considering eliminating tariffs on components from trusted trade partners and allies. That could further reduce costs for businesses without carrying the risk of the US overly relying on potentially less stable markets of foreign rivals like China.
“Component tariffs drive up US assembly costs relative to the current import mix,” the CTA reported. “They make it more expensive for companies to manufacture in the US and raise costs the most for products that matter most to consumers.”
Ideally, once assembly is brought into the US, businesses can then evaluate “on its merits” which products they can afford to fully manufacture in the US, components and all.
Trump seems unlikely to embrace an assembly-only plan for reshoring, as, for example, he has demanded that the US move quickly to reshore 50 percent of semiconductor manufacturing by the end of his term. On a press call, the CTA’s executive chair, Gary Shapiro, confirmed that “it is not realistic to think that roughly two years from now, we’re going to have over 50 percent of the semiconductor manufacturing in the US.
“I mean, that’s just physically impossible, labor-wise impossible,” Shapiro said. “And even if you threw full money at it today, you just can’t do it.”
Apple won’t blame Trump for price increases
The CTA didn’t forecast any specific product price increases. But Apple counts among the tech giants that the group represents, and it has faced the most pressure so far from Trump to commit to manufacturing its iPhone in the US—despite reports that this could dramatically increase the price of the world’s most popular smartphone.
Last spring, Trump threatened to find a way to impose a 25 percent tariff against a US company for the first time after Apple announced plans to manufacture smartphones in India. At that time, Wall Street analysts forecasted that an average US-made iPhone could cost anywhere from $1,500 to $3,500. More than doubling the cost of the latest iPhone might risk pricing out customers and hobbling Apple’s ubiquity, analysts suggested. And hiring enough US workers to manufacture iPhones to meet global demand would be impossible, a former Apple manufacturing engineer, Matthew Moore, told Bloomberg.
Apple never officially commented on Trump’s threats, instead gifting him a statue with a 24-karat gold base that said “Made in America.”
But notably since then, the company has faced some backlash for announcing a $2,000 starting price tier for the foldable iPhone Duo. That pricing came after Apple rolled out a 2T storage tier for the iPhone 17 Pro Max, also set around $2,000. Apple has denied that these price increases are linked to Trump’s tariffs, but critics doubt that’s entirely true. They wonder if Apple is anticipating more challenging cost margins as it invests in reshoring supply chains for other products and is perhaps “testing how much customers will pay for the absolute best iPhone money can buy,” Yahoo Finance reported.
PC Mag defended the iPhone Duo price as fair, noting that “in the middle of an industry-wide memory crisis, almost every new piece of tech is painfully marked up” and claiming that “Apple could have slapped an astronomical price tag on a brand-new foldable form factor and still sold units day one.”
Although Apple’s silence about tariffs and US-made iPhones have made it clear that the company, like other Big Tech firms, can navigate whatever Trump throws at them, small businesses that represent 80 percent of the CTA’s membership are not in the same boat, the CTA said. Those businesses bring in billions to the US economy, and increasing their costs could “measurably affect overall US inflation at a time when inflation is already above target and rising,” the CTA said.
“Policy that treats consumer technology as a single undifferentiated reshoring target risks imposing the largest consumer costs precisely where the economics are least favorable,” the CTA said. “The categories consumers regard as most essential, led by smartphones and laptops, are exactly those where the modeled cost of full domestic production is highest.”
