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[LoyceV]

Everyone trusts hardware wallets to secure cryptocurrencies, but how can the authenticity of a hardware wallet be verified so that it has not been tampered with or compromised during production or distribution?

That's a tough one It's recommended to only buy hardware wallets directly from the manufacturer (and never from third parties). After that, you can follow the authentication process on their website. But indeed, it's one of the things I never feel 100.0000000% sure about. It's too much of a black box.

Which one do you recommend hardware wallet or air gapped wallet?

It depends on your usage, and skills. You could go extreme and setup an air gapped hardware wallet, with a seed created from dice rolls. But for the average user, usually a hardware wallet is the safest compromise. Unless they enter their seed words on a recovery phishing website, there's no protection against that.
A hardware wallet is a lot more convenient to use than an air gapped system. You don't have to limit yourself to just one wallet.

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[ABCbits]

Everyone trusts hardware wallets to secure cryptocurrencies, but how can the authenticity of a hardware wallet be verified so that it has not been tampered with or compromised during production or distribution?

That's a tough one It's recommended to only buy hardware wallets directly from the manufacturer (and never from third parties). After that, you can follow the authentication process on their website. But indeed, it's one of the things I never feel 100.0000000% sure about. It's too much of a black box.

FWIW, some hardware wallet company create list of authorized reseller/distributor. Although i don't expect they're being monitored closely by HW company. And few hardware wallet is completely open (both hardware and software), where theoretically you could verify everything assuming you have time and skill to do that.

[LoyceV]

FWIW, some hardware wallet company create list of authorized reseller/distributor.

It still comes down to trusting someone.

few hardware wallet is completely open (both hardware and software), where theoretically you could verify everything assuming you have time and skill to do that.

Just like with Open Source software, most people will rely on other people to do that. There's always some trust involved, and that's the part I dislike (but I can't avoid it either).

[Pmalek]

And few hardware wallet is completely open (both hardware and software), where theoretically you could verify everything assuming you have time and skill to do that.

Any hardware wallet that has a secure element chip, and most of them do, can't be called open-source hardware-wise. The proper term would be as open-source as possible, something that Trezor used in one of its public communications a long time ago when the info about them creating their own secure element was fresh. I think even Foundation describes their products as having fully open-source hardware and software.

[Pmalek]

I want to know details about the secure element chip. Can you please elaborate on the cryptographic protocols employed by the secure element chip within the hardware wallet to protect users' private keys and sensitive data?

This isn't really the place to discuss hardware wallets or secure elements, but since you brought it up... A secure element is a safe enclosure for your private keys. They stay safely on the chip to prevent outside access. The data is encrypted and only decrypted when needed. Random number generators create the private keys in a fair and unbiased manner.

I am not sure if that answers your question. You can read Secure Elements in Hardware Wallets for more information.