Nintendo Switch

Last Friday, Nintendo joined thousands of companies suing the Trump administration to secure full refunds, plus interest, for billions in unlawful tariffs collected under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA).

In its complaint, Nintendo insisted that the Trump administration has already conceded that more than $200 billion in refunds are owed to hundreds of thousands of importers who paid tariffs, regardless of liquidation status.

However, Nintendo fears that the Trump administration may try to avoid paying refunds to certain companies whose tariff payments have already been liquidated, which means that the duties owed were finalized. The government has continually argued that it will only follow through on refunding all importers if a court directly orders refunds to be repaid in a way that requires reliquidation. Such an order would force officials to void all finalized tariffs and come as a relief to many companies in Nintendo’s position that remain uncertain if all their tariff payments can be clawed back.

Ultimately, Nintendo argued, it increasingly seems like the government plans to delay refunds until the court steps in. That leaves it up to the Court of International Trade to order Trump officials to do the right thing, Nintendo said. And in the gaming giant’s view, that’s to proceed with prompt refunds to make all importers whole.

As Nintendo explained, the company regularly imports goods and paid unlawful tariffs throughout 2025. Notably absent in Nintendo’s complaint was the amount of tariffs the company wants refunded. However, Nintendo seemingly has a lot of liquidated duties at stake. The company argued that without a ruling barring the government “from arguing that liquidation prevents the Court from ordering refunds,” the company will “suffer imminent irreparable harm.”

“All liquidated entries including IEEPA Duties must be reliquidated,” Nintendo argued. “This Court has the authority to reliquidate entries subject to the IEEPA duties.”

According to Nintendo, the Trump administration has no plans to oppose such a court order, and all that’s needed is the rubber stamp.

The company asked the court to order prompt refunds for all companies that were harmed by Trump’s unlawful key trade policy. To ensure that tariff refund delay chaos doesn’t worsen as courts weigh the right path forward, Nintendo also wants the court to block officials from continuing to liquidate tariff payments and to order the reliquidation of any liquidated entries.

Gamers may want Nintendo to share refunds

Nintendo of America declined to comment on whether the company has estimated the total tariff refund owed or to share any public financial documents that estimate total tariffs paid, so it’s hard to know exactly how big the company’s refund could be.

“We can confirm that we filed a request,” Nintendo of America said, regarding the lawsuit. “We have nothing else to share on this topic.”

It’s possible that Nintendo is uncomfortable sharing an estimate for its tariff refunds publicly, because the company has gotten some backlash over both ordinary and tariff-related price increases in the past year. Sharing an estimate of tariff refunds owed could risk reviving the backlash from customers, who may push for Nintendo to find a way to pass partial refunds on to customers who helped pay the tariffs.

For Nintendo, Trump’s IEEPA tariffs had particularly terrible timing. They took effect last April, just as Nintendo was gearing up to release the Switch 2. The sudden tariffs caused delays for preorders, but the console launched as planned, as Nintendo refused to let tariffs disrupt the official rollout.

For gamers, the Switch 2 already had a higher price tag than expected, at $450. Lashing out over the sticker shock, a swarm of disgruntled online protesters urged Nintendo to “drop the price.”

There was speculation that the price hike was linked to tariffs. But Nintendo of America President Doug Bowser told The Verge that the jump from the Switch’s debut price of $300 was not directly due to tariffs. Instead, it seemed that Nintendo had joined other game companies in raising console prices to historic highs, an Ars review found. But Bowser acknowledged that Trump’s IEEPA tariffs were still “fresh” at that moment, telling The Verge that, “like many companies right now,” Nintendo was “actively assessing what the impact may be.” Understandably, gamers braced for more price increases.

It only took a month before Nintendo President Shuntaro Furukawa foreshadowed tariff-linked price increases, a game industry news site closely monitoring Nintendo’s tariff moves reported. In May, Furukawa conceded that software wasn’t as impacted, but “hardware involves special factors such as tariffs,” which Nintendo must take into account, “while conducting careful and repeated deliberations when determining price.”

However, Furukawa said that the overall calculus for Nintendo weighed against increasing the Switch 2 price even more to cover tariffs, because seemingly Nintendo feared a higher price point would rob Switch 2 of sales and its games of exposure. As he explained:

Our basic policy is that for any country or region, if tariffs are imposed, we recognize them as part of the cost and incorporate them into the price. However, this year marks our first new dedicated video game system launch in eight years, so given our unique situation, our priority is to maintain the momentum of our platforms, which is extremely important for our dedicated video game platform business. Consequently, if the assumptions on tariffs change, we will consider what kind of price adjustments would be appropriate, taking into account various factors such as the market conditions.

By August, the Switch 2 price remained stable, but Nintendo had increased prices on the original Switch, as well as Switch 2 accessories, citing “market conditions.”

And it wasn’t just Nintendo forced to make adjustments that riled its fans, suggesting that many major players in the gaming industry may face demands from frustrated consumers to share refunds.

Nintendo may get creative to avoid backlash

Early on during Trump’s IEEPA tariff regime—which randomly raised and decreased tariffs on products from all major US trading partners—the Entertainment Software Association warned that the entire game industry could be harmed by unchecked tariffs.

And the Consumer Technology Association (CTA), which has long opposed IEEPA tariffs, forecasted before Trump took office that his tariff threats risked harming consumers by immediately increasing game console prices by 25 percent.

That forecast only got darker as 2025 dragged on. In May, when China and Trump were still embroiled in tit-for-tat retaliations, and China appeared to have the upper hand, CTA warned that an estimate showed only 1 percent of game consoles are produced in the US. If IEEPA tariffs weren’t changed to exempt consoles from tariffs, consoles could soon cost more than $1,000 on average, up by about 69 percent, CTA estimated.

It remains unclear how much Nintendo and other gaming companies paid in tariffs or how much their customers paid in tariff-related price increases, and for the latter at least, it will likely stay that way. No courts are currently weighing whether customers who helped importers pay for tariffs should get refunds, too.

A technology, media, and telecommunications leader for PwC, which advises big firms on tax questions, Dallas Dolen, told Ars that most companies are laser-focused right now on securing refunds. However, once they have that money, some companies that are worried about reputational harm may come up with “creative” ways to reimburse customers, such as offering discounts.

Ed Brzytwa, CTA’s vice president of international trade, told Ars that it was obvious that consumer backlash to price increases was one of the biggest tariff burdens for consumer tech firms like gaming companies.

“The main point that we’ve made over and over and over again is that this impacts consumers in the form of potentially higher costs for products,” Brzytwa told Ars.

Last month, libertarian think tank the Cato Institute published calculations showing that “tariff costs have generally been borne by US-based companies and consumers.”

“Americans are bearing most of the tariffs’ economic burden, including through higher retail prices,” the Cato Institute reported. In a chart tracking analysis that included measuring costs passed on to consumers, they cited a Goldman Sachs study that predicted by the end of 2025 that the amount of the “tariff burden” borne by consumers “would shift to 55 percent.” The most recent analysis cited, a Yale Budget Lab study, found that costs of tariffs passed on to companies and consumers increased over time.

There’s no telling yet whether any companies that passed on tariff costs will pass on relief to consumers or if it will simply help them keep prices stable as new tariffs come.

For Nintendo and other consumer tech companies, refunds may provide a reprieve but don’t actually provide relief from tariff hell, experts agreed. As Trump looks to replace struck-down IEEPA tariffs with tariffs that could shake up supply chains further by targeting semiconductors or other currently exempt tech products or materials, Dolen told Ars that tech companies “don’t feel better that there might be some, quote, win here because the supply chain still feels overwhelming.” That could mean that the best Americans can hope for is that prices don’t increase more as Trump tries to keep his tariff regime alive.

One glimmer of hope for American consumers—who largely oppose Trump’s tariffs across the board and are already frustrated to be missing out on tariff refunds—is that Trump is likely very well aware that threats of additional tariff-related price increases will likely not be tolerated ahead of the midterm elections, experts suggested.