Narrator: Purism sources all the components in the Librem 5 USA domestically, with the exception of the chassis and the Wi-Fi card.
Todd Weaver: Overall what we are looking at is that all the electronics are manufactured at our facility. The chassis, the specific components–they’re called integrated circuits–those can come from outside the country. As one example, our NXP CPU is manufactured in South Korea and then we import that specific chip and then we use it on our board that we do all the manufacturing.
If we are talking about major components which aren’t soldered on the circuit boards, then the cellular modem card, screen and cameras also don’t come from the USA. Purism should be commended for doing the PCB assembly at its own facilities, but I find the “Made in USA electronics” label to be confusing, because the components soldered on the boards are also electronics, and the majority of identifiable components on the circuit boards aren’t manufactured in the U.S. Either Purism should just say “Made in USA”, or if it wants to be specific: “Made in USA circuit boards”.
According to the FTC rules, products can have the “Made in USA” label if the final assembly is done in the U.S, so the Librem 5 USA would qualify:
The Made in USA Labeling Rule, which will be published in the Federal Register, incorporates guidance set forth in the Commission’s previous Decisions and Orders and its 1997 Enforcement Policy Statement on U.S. Origin Claims.
Consistent with this guidance, the rule will prohibit marketers from including unqualified Made in USA claims on labels unless: 1) final assembly or processing of the product occurs in the United States; 2) all significant processing that goes into the product occurs in the United States; and 3) all or virtually all ingredients or components of the product are made and sourced in the United States.
Purism should definitely brag about the fact that it assembles its own circuit boards in house, but that label is just confusing in my opinion.
Weaver says that he hopes to expand the line of products that the company makes in the U.S.
I would love to see the L14 made in the U.S. I’m not sure that I could afford it, but I think that there would be demand from corporations and governments that have strict sourcing requirements and the software on those products isn’t a work in progress like the L5USA, so I can see more corporate customers. I’m more skeptical about the Mini and Server being made in the U.S., since those are currently rebadged OEM products, and it would be a large investment for Purism to design their own products and make them in house.
Weaver: There is also potential for us to get into chip manufacturing.
The only way I see this happening is if Purism buys an FPGA made by Intel in the US and then puts RISC-V cores on it. It wouldn’t be very energy efficient, but Purism might be able to sell desktop PCs with that kind of chip.