Trump’s Tariffs May Hit Gamers Especially Hard
Earlier this month, the news fell upon the gaming community like a hammer: The Nintendo Switch 2, the hotly anticipated new console set to launch on June 5, would be priced at $449.99. This would make it Nintendo’s most expensive console at launch, nearly a decade after the company released the original Switch console for $299 in 2017. With the game Mario Kart World bundled in, the cost for the Switch 2 would be $499.99; on its own, the game would go for roughly $80, an unusually high price.
On the same day as Nintendo’s announcement, April 3, President Donald Trump conducted his own reveal, unveiling sweeping tariffs against trading partners and allies across the world. Already shaken by the high price of the Switch 2, the gaming community suffered yet another blow: That Friday, Nintendo delayed the date that consumers could preorder the console. The Switch 2 would no longer be available to preorder on April 9, the company said in a statement, “in order to assess the potential impact of tariffs and evolving market conditions.”
During Trump’s first term in office, Nintendo moved some of its Switch production from China, then embroiled in a trade war with the United States, to Vietnam. But Trump had announced a 46 percent tariff on Vietnam, which hosts much of the company’s production—one of the highest tariff rates of any country. He had also imposed a 24 percent tariff on goods from Japan, where Nintendo is based. The cost of exporting and producing goods—such as video game consoles—will increase, which could in turn be pushed onto the average gamer who might buy a Nintendo Switch 2. (On Wednesday afternoon, the president offered a partial climbdown from his original plan, announcing a 90-day pause on most of the planned tariffs after days of market losses.)
Nintendo is notable for its ability to “manage and control its supply chain,” said Joost van Dreunen, an adjunct assistant professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business. So the delay in preorders for the Switch 2 is an indication of that supply chain being affected.
“They’re going to have—just like we saw during the pandemic, when shipping costs were enormous—sort of a … rationing of hardware and unit sales and retail, because it doesn’t make sense for them to invest the money necessary and eat into their own margin to get this out to the consumer base [sooner],” van Dreunen said.
Doug Bowser, the aptly named president of Nintendo for America, insisted in an interview with NPR that the initial price of the console was not calculated to account for likely tariffs. But van Dreunen thinks the pricing was intended to cover some of that anticipated tariff cost—making it roughly $450 rather than $400, for example.
“They’re too good at the supply chain components to not have considered that, that aspect,” said van Dreunen. “In my mind, they expected, like, a 10 to 20 percent tariff increase that would be historically consistent, as unhelpful as it may be for their business. And I think what they’re being hit with is, like, two or three times that.”
Trump has indicated that he believes tariffs can be a major source of government revenue, perhaps even replacing the federal income tax, and that he will attempt to make bilateral deals with trading partners to restore what he’s characterized as an unfair trade imbalance. But a big part of his pitch has been the notion that tariffs will bring manufacturing jobs stateside. For his part, van Dreunen says it is “naïve” to believe that game companies such as Nintendo might be inspired to move their production process to the U.S., despite Trump’s arguments that tariffs might encourage companies to transfer their operations.
“I just don’t see it happening for either PlayStation, Microsoft, or Nintendo to start setting up hardware manufacturing, console manufacturing in the U.S. based on these tariffs, which are entirely arbitrarily imposed,” van Dreunen said. “I don’t think that they would react by immediately saying, ‘Yeah, let’s spend the money to set up manufacturing plants and spend the five to 10 years to divert production to a much more expensive economic environment.’”
The cost of potential tariffs will not just be felt by would-be purchasers of the Switch 2. Aubrey Quinn, spokesperson for the Entertainment Software Association, told IGN last week that “we do expect these tariffs will have a real and detrimental impact on the industry and the hundreds of millions of Americans who love to play games.” The impact would not only be on pricing, Quinn argued, but on customer spending. This would have several knock-on effects: If consumers are spending less, companies will make less profit; if companies see decreased revenue, they may cut jobs or slash investment in research and development.
“The entire consumer ecosystem is connected,” Quinn said. According to the Entertainment Software Association, more than 350,000 jobs in the U.S. are directly or indirectly related to the video game industry; the industry also generated $14.4 billion in federal, state, and local taxes in 2023. The cost of physical games will also be affected; as video game analyst Daniel Ahmad noted last month, Mexico—one of the targets of Trump’s tariffs—is a major producer of discs for games. Gaming is already an increasingly expensive pastime, so higher costs could turn off future consumers.
For passionate gamers, the impact of the tariffs will be felt most significantly with the cost of hardware. A January report by the Consumer Technology Association, published before Trump took office, estimated that his tariff proposals would increase the cost of laptops and tablets by 46 to 68 percent, smartphones by 26 to 37 percent, and video game consoles by 26 to 37 percent.
The affected parties will include a crucial demographic that helped Trump over the finish line in the 2024 election: young men. There is a distinct pipeline between the gaming community and the alt-right—a largely online far-right movement—and from there, to support for Trump. The anger of the 2014 Gamergate movement, in which men embarked on a harassment campaign of online vitriol against women in the gaming community, was harnessed by then-Breitbart editor and current Trump adviser Steve Bannon. Many of the complaints that young, and especially white, male gamers had with the industry—namely the increased diversity among game creators and within games—were also held by Trump.
“The same kinds of arguments that were being made about video games were then made about other things in pop culture, but then culture largely, right? That feminism and that [diversity] had ruined their favorite things, and also that they were being shut out of this political sphere,” said Adrienne Massanari, an associate professor of communication studies at American University and the author of a book on the connections between the tech community and the far right.
That group may now be angry about the hike in price for the Switch 2, and for consoles and games writ large. But that frustration would not necessarily translate into anger with Trump himself, even though he is the one imposing the levies. In a community that has adopted a video game–style sense of morality, with a black-and-white vision of right and wrong and heroes and villains, the actions of the main character can be justified.
For many with this perspective, Trump is not simply a political figure but an object of fandom, an idol whose contradictory positions can be rationalized, explained Massenari. She also highlighted the overlapping communities of young male gamers and young men who listen to popular podcasts that promote traditional gender roles and visions of masculinity—many of whom were swayed to support Trump in the 2024 election.
“These tariffs will be seen in the same way that people talk about purification of the body through weight lifting, through supplements,” said Massenari. “It’s just this temporary moment of pain, but you will come out greater in the end—and also have, you know, given it to the libs, or wokeness, or feminists.”
The subsection of gamers who support Trump, or what he symbolizes, are hardly representative of the entirety of the gaming community. Nor are all gamers men, or young. Higher costs of video game consoles will be felt across a broad community, even if it is not necessarily directly connected to Trump in the public mindset. While the Switch 2 may not be considered a necessity, it shouldn’t be considered a purely luxury item either, said Massanari.
“We all know that in the face of all of the myriad things that we’re experiencing in the world right now, and just the multiple catastrophes, that art and entertainment and those things are sometimes keeping people together,” said Massanari. “This isn’t just some sort of flippant thing, to say, ‘Well, what does it matter because it’s just this luxury item?’ But it’s not, really.”