Nintendo Took the President to Court Over His Tariffs. Good.

Interpreting the law in such a broad way would amount to a 'transformative expansion of the President's authority.'

— Chief Justice John Roberts, Learning Resources Inc. v. Trump (2026)

Six justices signed on. Three dissented. The constitutional math was not close. Following the ruling, President Trump signed an executive order terminating the IEEPA tariffs effective February 24 — then promptly announced new tariffs under Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974, capped at 15% and limited to 150 days. The tariff policy didn't end. It changed legal vehicles. And the $130 to $200 billion already collected under the old regime remains, for now, in government hands [2][4].

Nintendo Wasn't Alone — Not Even Close

Nintendo's filing landed in a crowded courthouse. According to reporting from Gizmodo and Politico, nearly 1,000 companies have filed or are preparing similar suits [3]. The list includes Costco, Goodyear, GoPro, Toyota, and Revlon. This is not a band of ideologically motivated litigants. This is corporate America doing what corporations do when the government takes money it wasn't authorized to take: they hire lawyers and go to court.

For Nintendo specifically, the stakes were concrete. The original "reciprocal tariff" announcement on April 2, 2025 arrived on the same day the company officially revealed the Switch 2. Nintendo delayed U.S. pre-orders indefinitely, raised accessory prices, and spent months navigating a tariff structure that hit its Vietnam and China manufacturing bases especially hard — Vietnam at 46%, China as high as 145% [2]. The console launched at its original $449.99 price in June 2025, a minor miracle of supply chain discipline. The legal bill for those unlawful tariffs is what Nintendo is now presenting.

The Conservative Principle at Stake

Let's be direct. Some conservatives — particularly those who define conservatism as loyalty to whoever currently occupies the Oval Office — will feel uncomfortable about a Japanese company suing the Trump administration. That discomfort is worth examining. The principle that the executive cannot unilaterally impose taxes is not a liberal principle. It is one of the oldest and most fundamental constraints in the Anglo-American constitutional tradition. It is why we had a revolution. It is what conservatives used to say they believed before it became politically inconvenient.

Some of our more economically minded commentators have spent recent months writing about how tariffs ultimately fall on consumers — and they're not wrong [4]. But the solution they tend to favor is more government programs to offset the cost of living. A narrower, more constitutionally grounded alternative exists: don't collect money the government wasn't authorized to collect in the first place. Nintendo's lawyers figured this out. Customs and Border Protection — which has told the Court of International Trade it doesn't currently have the manpower or the technology to issue refunds — is still working on it.

What Comes Next

The refund question is genuinely thorny. An estimated $130 to $200 billion was collected under the IEEPA regime [2]. CBP says it cannot comply with the refund order and has suggested a new process could be established within 45 days. Meanwhile, Judge Richard Eaton of the USCIT has indicated willingness to take on the wave of incoming suits. The Trump administration's pivot to Section 122 tariffs — with a 15% ceiling and a 150-day expiration — is a stop-gap, not a strategy. It expires. Congress will eventually have to decide whether it wants to write trade authority into law, delegate it properly, or let the whole framework expire.

That's the real question underneath the Nintendo headline. The courts have done their part. The Constitution has operated as designed. Six justices — including justices appointed by this president — read the statute, compared it to Article I, and said: no. What happens next depends on whether Congress is willing to do the harder work of actually legislating trade policy, or whether it prefers to outsource the responsibility and complain about the results. That's not a new dynamic in Washington. It's just unusually well-illustrated right now — by, of all people, the people who make Mario.