On Friday, the Supreme Court of the United States of America ruled against the majority of President Donald Trump’s tariffs, including those enacted using a decades-old law reserved for a national emergency. These 2025 tariffs led to a last-minute Switch 2 pre-order delay as well as increased video game console and accessory prices. It’s a major setback for the President, which could help alleviate rising gaming costs, but might all be for nothing as Trump will likely move to reactivate the tariffs using different legal methods.
In 2025, President Trump used the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to enact tariffs against a large list of countries. No previous president had ever used the law to impose tariffs against other nations. The court was split 6-3 in its decision to rule on Trump’s unprecedented use of the IEEPA illegal, with Chief Justice John Roberts writing the majority opinion.
“The president asserts the extraordinary power to unilaterally impose tariffs of unlimited amount, duration and scope,” wrote Roberts. But the Chief wrote that Congress has never said the language in the IEEPA applied to tariffs, adding: “We hold that IEEPA does not authorize the president to impose tariffs.” Roberts was joined by the three liberal justices as well as two conservatives, Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett.
Last year, Trump’s reciprocal tariffs and trade war against countries like China and Canada directly led to Nintendo delaying pre-orders for the Switch 2 in April.
“Pre-orders for Nintendo Switch 2 in the U.S. will not start on April 9, 2025, in order to assess the potential impact of tariffs and evolving market conditions. Nintendo will update timing at a later date. The launch date of June 5, 2025 is unchanged,” said the company. In August, the company quietly raised the prices on many different Switch accessories and models of the original console. Other companies like Sony and Microsoft followed suit with similar price increases on hardware and accessories as a result of tariffs against countries that produce many of the parts needed to manufacture gaming hardware.
