Spare a thought for the gamers in your life, especially the Americans ones, because the US president has just indicated that he’s dragging them into his trade war. And after they’d done so much for him, especially in Fortnite team chat!
In a new and exhaustingly long list of things which the US will now impose tariffs upon are games and gaming consoles, whose prices will rise by an eyewatering 25 per cent under a new proposal from the Trump administration. That’ll show them pesky Chinese!
Well, it won’t because tariffs are paid by people doing the buying, not the selling – so it’ll show them, um, Americans that like games. Boom!
There’s already a tariff on consoles imported to the US from the European Union because Trump is nothing if not consistent about his love for tariffs.
But the timing is especially unfortunate for the American gamethusiast since the release dates for the new generation of Xbox and Playstation consoles are about to be announced.
And spoiler: they are not made in America using good, all-American knowhow, and will therefore be imported, complete with new tariffs.
And this is going to put the typical US fragmaster in a bind. Does he support uneconomic strategies which force him to pay a massive hike on the new consoles and games, or criticise the president that has made it absolutely OK to be racist, sexist and homophobic in public?
What a conundrum!
Of course, now that “gaming disorder” has been deemed a medical condition maybe this is as close as Trump is likely to come to enacting a public health measure.