Rubbish Check
Daily Mail Money · 6 August 2026
source“Nintendo gets a £693m power up after landing a hefty refund from Trump’s trade tariffs”
R6/ 10
Spin-heavy
Rubbish Rating — 1 = base fact, 10 = pure rubbish
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In short
Rubbish Talk rates Daily Mail's claim that Nintendo got a "£693m power up" from a "hefty refund" a 6/10 because the £693m is Nintendo's total six-month profit, not the refund, and the outlet's own reporting admits Nintendo never disclosed the refund's size.
The Verdict
Spin-heavy. The headline structure invites readers to read the £693m as the tariff refund itself, when the article's own body says that figure is total profit and that Nintendo did not specify exactly how big a refund it received in the US. Calling an undisclosed number "hefty" is an editorial flourish with no data behind it, and the framing buries a 9.5% sales decline sitting one sentence away.
What actually happened
Nintendo's half-year filing showed a jump in profit that the company itself attributed to several factors, not one. The tariff refund was named as a contributor alongside console and game sales, with no dollar or yen figure attached to it.
Key facts
- Nintendo reported a profit of £693million for the six months to June, 54 per cent higher than the previous year, despite a 9.5 per cent decline in sales to £2.4billion.
- Nintendo noted the figure was helped by 'the refund of tariffs in the US', alongside 'strong' sales of its Switch 2 console and a steady performance of new titles including Yoshi and the Mysterious Book and Star Fox.
- It did not specify exactly how big a refund it received in the US, meaning "hefty" and "power up" describe a figure nobody has confirmed.
- Trump's government has had to repay around £74billion in tariffs after the US Supreme Court ruled that the levies on imports, which the President announced last year, were unconstitutional as he had not secured Congressional approval, which is real context for why any refund exists at all.
What to watch for
Watch Nintendo's next quarterly filing or investor call for an actual refund figure. If it turns out to be a modest fraction of £693m, this headline's framing will look worse in hindsight than it already does. Also watch whether sales keep declining even as profit is flattered by one-off tariff relief, since that's a trend the headline currently obscures.
About this scoreThe R-Score is Rubbish Talk's editorial opinion on how far a headline's framing sits from what the underlying facts support. It is a judgement about presentation and emphasis, not an allegation that any outlet has acted dishonestly. Every figure we rely on is linked under Receipts so you can check it yourself.
