Purism's Liberty phone, which costs $2,000, has a higher price tag than the iPhone 16 Pro, and only half of its memory capacity. It's also significantly thicker, and users are somewhat limited in the number of apps they can install on the device. And Weaver said that while approximately 90 percent of the phone's components come from the United States, Canada and Europe, a crystal that makes the device's motherboard work is only available in China.

"There just isn’t a company yet providing that single crystal," Weaver told NBC.

Weaver also said that it took approximately six years from the time Purism was founded in 2014 to the point where it could start manufacturing phones, whereas Trump Mobile has promised to build a phone from scratch in the United States and begin selling it this August. The Purism CEO added that Trump's mercurial approach toward imposing tariffs makes it very difficult for business owners like him to adapt to an economic climate that's constantly in flux.

“It’s terrible,” Weaver said. “If you have no idea, and you can’t predict [the policy], it’s very hard for any company, for any business owner. From t-shirts, textiles, to high tech, it is very hard to make a long term business decision when you’re in a whipsaw.”