Politics eh? The spidery arm of Government constantly affects virtually every aspect of our lives, but there is a lot going on at the moment, even more than usual, and the general feeling that our pockets are going to be lighter for the foreseeable future is becoming more difficult to shift with every passing day.
US President Donald Trump is waging economic war on much of the globe at the moment, imposing tariffs of regions perceived to be benefiting more on trade than than the States itself. Whichever side of the line you sit as to whether this is good or bad, one thing that is for sure is that you are about to start paying more for goods you traditionally have come to expect to be cheap, such as purchases from China, or even goods manufactured and imported from that side of the world, which, well, we all have a house full of those.
Which brings us to Nintendo’s upcoming Switch 2 console, hardware that has so far been teased but that we are expecting to get the full details on at the start of April. We don’t even know the intended price yet, but we do know there is an awful time between now and April for that price to have to change.
However, a senior analyst at MST, David Gibson believes that Switch 2 prices will not be affected by ongoing rumblings at the White House. While China is set to be hit with a 10% tariff, Gibson states on X that Nintendo has already switched up to 50% of its production to Vietnam, and did this during Trump’s first term when tariffs were an issue.
China tariff impact on Switch 2 launch in the US? Zero.
When Trump had his first term …Nintendo with Hosiden decided to try and get to 50% of production from Vietnam. So Vietnam production will supply to the US and China etc will supply to the rest of the world. Smart.— David Gibson (@gibbogame) February 2, 2025
This means that US stock could be imported from Vietnam, a country which (and everything is on the table to change hour by hour) has no current plans to be included in the trade wars.
Problem solved. Although whether life will turn out to be quite that simple is another matter. It will be interesting to see what price we get when the announcement comes around in a few weeks time. With games already seemingly earmarked at $70 the issue extends to cartridges potentially too.
While Nintendo makes the chips for its cartridges in Japan, it is believed that assembly often takes place in, you guessed it, China. As for packaging – China. So even if Nintendo has a means of getting around the obvious trade issues, this will still be a headache when producing en masse.
The last time Trump was in power Nintendo was not having to gear up for a new machine launch with high stock levels of everything needed to satisfy demand.
Everything is speculation at this point because we simply don’t know what will pan out and when. We just have to keep our fingers crossed that the games industry does not get hit hard in the coming weeks.