Emma Roth, reporting for The Verge:

Nintendo is pushing back preorders for the Switch 2 due to concerns about Donald Trump’s newly announced tariffs. According to a statement sent to The Verge by Eddie Garcia on behalf of Nintendo, it says preorders will no longer begin on April 9th:

Pre-orders for Nintendo Switch 2 in the U.S. will not start April 9, 2025 in order to assess the potential impact of tariffs and evolving market conditions. Nintendo will update timing at a later date. The launch date of June 5, 2025 is unchanged.

There’s still no word on when preorders will begin, as Nintendo says it will “update timing at a later date.” Nintendo still plans to launch the Switch 2 on June 5th.

One critical bit of news that was the impetus for this piece is that this only affects U.S. pre-orders; the date remains unchanged in other countries, including Japan, Nintendo’s home country. I’d imagine we’ll be seeing much more of this in the coming months: Most companies won’t announce prices as soon as they can because they don’t know when those prices will have to increase. There’s too much volatility.

This is all just psychotic. Here are Eshe Nelson and Keith Bradsher, reporting for The New York Times on the situation as of Friday afternoon:

The global rout in stock markets continued on Friday as worries deepened about a trade war, after China retaliated against President Trump’s sweeping tariffs with steep levies of its own on U.S. goods.

The S&P 500 fell 4.7 percent by midday Friday. The benchmark U.S. index on Thursday posted its worst daily loss since 2020, plunging 4.8 percent.

Losses were widespread, hitting technology companies as well as firms that rely on Chinese manufacturing in their supply chains. Apple shares dropped 5 percent. Shares in Caterpillar, which makes construction equipment, tumbled more than 5 percent.

The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite index fell nearly 5 percent, pushing it into a bear market, Wall Street’s term for a decline of more than 20 percent from its previous peak.

There’s a reason tech stocks are dropping considerably higher than the rest of the market at large, at least from my non-economist, tech-journalistic perspective: Trump’s latest round of tariffs hit technology more than perhaps any other sector because tech manufacturing is heavily reliant on international affairs. Most high-end processors — Nvidia, Apple, AMD, and Qualcomm — are made in Taiwan by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company. Trump tariffed the nation by 32 percent yesterday. Those chips are then packaged and shipped to China — Chinese imports are tariffed 54 percent according to Trump’s plan. Macs and AirPods are made in Vietnam, where Trump’s tariff rate is 46 percent.

Mark Gurman, Bloomberg’s star Apple reporter, said that without question, Apple would raise the prices of all of its products later this year. The math checks out: A 54 percent increase in taxes is just unfathomable for business. Daniel Ives, an analyst at Wedbush Securities, believes iPhones could soon rise to $3,500 from $1,000, with a more realistic expectation being $2,300 for the upcoming models. The former prediction accounts for an emergency situation, but it illustrates what we could see when new Macs ship later this year. Macs are much more complex and have a variety of configuration options, and higher-priced models will undoubtedly get more expensive because of the tariffs. This isn’t economic rocket science — it’s basic economics backed up by actually smart people. Don’t believe me, believe the economists.

Even Meta was hit by the tariffs because physical goods retailers are anxious about consumer spending. Here’s Mike Isaac, reporting for The New York Times:

Apple, Dell, Oracle — which rely on hardware and global supply chains that are in the direct line of fire from tariffs — saw their shares go into free-fall. But there was another big tech company whose stock took a pummeling even though its core business has little to do with hardware: Meta.

Shares of the company, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, fell $52 to $531.62 on Thursday and were down again on Friday. In total, Meta shed a whopping 9 percent of its market capitalization on Thursday…

Those companies buy a different kind of ad called “direct response advertising.” These ads typically encourage an action of some sort, like downloading a company’s app or buying a kitchen gadget featured on an Instagram video…

The effect of tariffs on Meta’s ad business is simple. Many of its small and medium-sized advertisers are from all across the world. President Trump’s tariffs will instantly make it more expensive for them to sell their products to customers in the United States.

Again, I’m not an economist and have no intention of explaining the current situation. I don’t write about the economy — I write about technology. But Americans, come this fall, will no longer be able to afford most consumer electronics, which is pretty bad for the world at large. The artificial intelligence industry will come to a screeching halt because importing expensive processors from Taiwan will be impossible. Investors who gamble on the success of AI start-ups like OpenAI or Anthropic will no longer be incentivized to spend their fortunes on a volatile market.

Perhaps the irony in the whole situation is that the people who are set to suffer the most because of the tariffs are the ones who spent the most getting Trump elected. The David Sacks, Andreessen-Horowitz, Y Combinator gang gave it their all to get Trump in the Oval Office, and now, they’re reaping what they sowed — higher prices for expensive chip imports. I couldn’t care less about whatever happens to Mark Andreessen’s millions — I wish him and his Silicon Valley psychopaths the absolute worst — but the small firms he invests in will undoubtedly ache thanks to his political antics. I care about them because their contributions shape the future of technology. (See: OpenAI and Anthropic.) Same for Elon Musk, whose companies (chiefly Tesla) are undeniably important in accelerating the transition to clean energy. And don’t even get me started on Tim Cook, Apple’s chief executive.

American voters are truly a brain-dead species. They’re complete puppets to whoever they idolize. The ultra-rich have spent every waking second of the last four years idolizing Trump to get tax breaks. Naturally, the median American voter fell into that trap and either voted for Trump or stayed home. The plan worked, and now the whole country’s in jeopardy. That was the plan from the hardcore Make America Great Again zealots (Steve Bannon, Stephen Miller, the Heritage Foundation, et al.) all along: to elevate Russia and relegate the United States to essentially a third-world nation. They got exactly what they wanted and played the rest of the country like pawns.

So, yes, it’s liberation week in America. Liberation from doing anything anyone loved before April 9. Nice work, morons.