The price of Nintendo Switch 2 could have been affected by US president Donald Trump’s trade tariffs, expert analysis claims.
The Switch 2‘s price of $449.99 in the US is considered at the higher end of what was realistically expected, and analysts suggest Nintendo‘s decision may have been in anticipation of an impact by any tariffs imposed by Trump.
Trump has been imposing tariffs on numerous countries in recent weeks, including a sizeable tariff on China, where tech products are often manufactured. On Wednesday he also introduced a blanket 10% tariff on all imports, with countries like China and Japan – what Trump calls “the worst offenders” – getting larger tariffs of 54% and 24% respectively.
A report by the Financial Times suggests that the Switch 2 price is an indication that Trump’s tariffs will have an effect on video game prices.
Japanese video game analyst and founder of Kantan Games, Serkan Toto, told the publication that he believed the Switch 2 price took Trump’s recent behaviour into account, saying the price “suggested Nintendo was building a buffer in case tariffs hit supply chains harder than expected”.
A separate report from the Financial Times last month suggested that Nintendo had already been shifting production away from China since Trump’s first administration stated its intent to upend global trading, noting that more than half of the hardware Nintendo imports into the US comes from Vietnam and Cambodia.
However, the tariffs imposed by Trump on Wednesday – which he says will go into effect on April 9 – include a 46% tariff on Vietnam and a 49% tariff on Cambodia.
According to FT sources, hundreds of thousands of Switch 2 consoles have already been sent from Vietnam to Nintendo’s US facilities since the start of the year, perhaps in anticipation of such a move.
MST Financial analysts David Gibson told the publication: “Export data combined with finished product codes confirms that Nintendo shipped finished Switch 2 [from Vietnam] across five days in January for a total of 383,000 units with all of them going to the USA. I suspect this occurred to test the distribution system and get ahead of the risk of tariffs. I expect the numbers to have ramped-up significantly in February and March.”
