US trade group the ESA says Trump tariffs will ‘have a real and detrimental impact on the video game industry’

American video game trade group The Entertainment Software Association (ESA) warned that commercial tariffs imposed by the president of the United States, Donald Trump, “will have a real and harmful impact” on the games industry.

Trump has been imposing tariffs on numerous countries in recent weeks, including a considerable rate about China, where technological products are often manufactured. On Wednesday he also presented a 10% general rate over all imports, with countries such as China, Vietnam and Japan, which Trump calls among the “worst criminals”, obtaining larger rates of 54%, 46% and 24% respectively.

In a discussion with Stephen Totilo for his game archive bulletin, the senior vice president of ESA, Aubrey Quinn, said that the game hardware, including consoles, could receive great success as a result of these rates, since some of them often have pieces from multiple countries.

“Any product that would buy a consumer is probably subject to many of the announced rates, all aggravated one on top of each other,” Quinn explained.

Quinn also suggested that the situation could get worse, given the possibility that countries affected by tariffs can respond by imposing own rates in the United States, warning: “I think what we hear yesterday is not the end of history, not for the United States, not for other countries.”

When asked if ESA should consider Trump’s suggestion that more goods must be made in the US.

“I think each company, each industry, the video game industry included, must think about what is best for consumers, the best for business and the best for employees,” he said. “Supply chains are complicated and, without a doubt, supply chains do not change overnight. Everything that is considered or determined cannot be a rapid change and cannot be an instinctive reaction to any particular announcement.”

Early, a Financial Times report suggested that the price of the USA. The Switch 2 of $ 449.99 could have been affected by Trump’s commercial rates, and Nintendo possibly decided its price with the impact of possible tariffs in mind.

The Japanese video game analyst and founder of Kantan Games, Serkan Toto, told the publication that he believed that the Switch 2 price took into account Trump’s recent behavior, saying that the price “suggested that Nintendo was building a shock absorber in case the tariffs reached the strongest supply chains of what expected.”