It’s Mario v. The United States Government this week, as video game company Nintendo has just become the latest corporation to sue the Trump White House in search of a refund for all those tariffs it’s had to pay on its fancy new Switch 2 systems since last February. Per Aftermath, Nintendo filed the suit on Friday, in the wake of the Supreme Court and other American judges ruling that Trump didn’t actually have the legal authority to impose the import duties that have been draining cash from companies trying to sell stuff to Americans since last year.
That most especially goes for Nintendo, which had the bad fortune to begin its big push to launch the Switch 2 at the exact same moment, back in 2025, when Trump was starting to fiddle in earnest with his latest expensive (and, in hindsight, illegal) toy. (Your humble Newswire writer was actually at a preview event for the new console on the day when this was all coming to a head, and you’ve never seen a bunch of guys in suits more visibly nervous when you asked them how much a video game machine might end up costing.) The Switch 2 ended up rolling out at its originally listed price point of $450, but Nintendo raised the price on the system’s accessories to try to make up some of the new costs. (It also, according to Aftermath, made a very deliberate effort to fill the American market with those versions of the console manufactured in Vietnam, which has a much lower tariff rate than the one slapped on units manufactured in China.)
Nintendo is not remotely alone in suing the government on this issue; Fedex, Costco, and about a thousand other companies have all launched similar lawsuits in the U.S. Court Of International Trade in the wake of the tariffs—which Trump unsuccessfully tried to run through the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977—being ruled illegal. Customs and Border Protection officials, meanwhile, have made legal filings stating that there’s basically no way its current system can handle the “unprecedented volume of refunds” the new rulings would require, saying it might have the added functionality to do some of it in about 45 days. Meanwhile, Nintendo and other companies are claiming that the Trump administration’s decision to continue collecting tariffs even amidst legal questions about their validity—which began cropping up from, essentially, day one— has only exacerbated the problems; at this point, they’re not just asking for their money back, but with interest.
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