Profits at Nintendo, the maker of Super Mario video games, surged after it landed a hefty refund from Donald Trump’s trade tariffs.

The Japanese firm 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, which were released in May and June respectively. 

It did not specify exactly how big a refund it received in the US.

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.