The people doing the final assembly of the Librem 5 USA are working in Purism's Fulfillment Center in Carlsbad, California, which is a suburb of San Diego. Housing is very expensive in the San Diego area, so we are talking about wages for assembly workers that are much higher than $13 or $14 per hour. It sounds like the company making the PCB's is also located in the San Diego area (based on what Purism said about its Librem 5 DevKit), which means that Purism is paying a company that likely makes prototype boards, which means that Purism is paying a lot more for its boards than Chinese mass production prices. I doubt that Purism has more than a couple hundred orders for the Librem 5 USA, but it says that it will store the parts for the phone and do the final assembly itself. It also is doing just-in-time manufacturing of the phone in very small quantities. All of this has very high unit costs.

Frankly, ThatGeoGuy's assessment of the Librem 5 USA is ridiculous. First of all, he doesn't evaluate what it costs to set up a facility in a San Diego suburb that stores parts with supply chain security, orders small-scale PCBA production, and does small-scale final assembly. Second, he ignores the fact that the Librem 5 USA is a niche product for corporate and government clients who need supply chain security. It is competing with products like the Silent Circle's Silent Phone, Motorola Solutions' LEX L11 and Bittium's Tough Mobile 2. The only one of those phones which publicly lists its price is the Bittium Tough Mobile 2, which costs €1550 (US$1816), so the Librem 5 USA is in the same price range. Third, he totally ignores the cost of paying roughly a dozen developers to work for 3.3 years to develop a Linux phone. How does a company recover those high development costs that have gone way over budget? One way is to develop a side product with high profit margins that caters to niche customers with specialized needs.