As Trump pushes Apple to make iPhones in the U.S., Google's brief effort building smartphones in Texas 12 years ago offers critical lessons

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The executives were well aware of the difficulties they would face in manufacturing a smartphone in the U.S. As with any great tech industry moonshot, the challenge was part of the appeal—and they embraced it.

“Conventional wisdom said it wasn’t possible,” the company crowed defiantly in a blog post announcing the new America-made smartphone. “Experts said that costs are too high in the US; that the US has lost its manufacturing capability; and that the US labor force is too inflexible.”