The check arrives
Developments
- Six U.S. Supreme Court justices—two of them his own appointees—just ruled Donald Trump’s tariffs illegal. The constitutional confrontation his administration spent a year bracing for is here. Now what?
- Negotiating nuclear talks and a war in the same Geneva afternoon. Arresting a former prince. & The first crewed lunar mission since 1972 gets its launch date.
Features
- What’s online gambling doing to American society? Gerda Reith on the new “ecosystem” tech, finance, and marketing firms are cultivating together.
- Why is Silicon Valley fighting with the EU? Anu Bradford on how American tech companies are enlisting the White House against European regulation.
Books
- If states are always ruled by elites, what does that make democracy? Hugo Drochon’s Elites and Democracy.
Music
- What’s free jazz doing on a major record label?
- & New tracks from Irreversible Entanglements, Skee Mask, Ratboys, Daniel O’Sullivan x Richard Youngs, & Ella Langley.
+ Weather report
- Nearly half the continental U.S. is in drought—and the wheat’s just waking up …
Developments
The leash
The U.S. Supreme Court struck down U.S. President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs on Friday, ruling 6-3 that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act—a 1977 sanctions law known as IEEPA—does not, after all, authorize the president to impose import duties. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion, joined by two of Trump’s own appointees, Justices Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett. Roberts anchored the ruling in Article I of the U.S. Constitution, which assigns the taxing power—including to impose tariffs—not to the president but to the United States Congress.
The decision invalidated the “Liberation Day” tariffs Trump imposed on nearly every trading partner last April, along with levies on China, Canada, and Mexico that his administration justified as responses to fentanyl trafficking. Together, those duties had collected more than US$160 billion, according to the Tax Foundation, and accounted for roughly half of all U.S. customs revenue. Within hours, Trump signed an executive order invoking Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974—a statute no president has ever used—to impose a new 10 percent global tariff effective on Tuesday, February 24. Section 122 caps rates at 15 percent and expires in 150 days unless Congress votes to extend them.
What has the court actually taken away from Trump here?
—and how much can the replacement tariffs get him back?
- The old authority had no limits. Under IEEPA, as the administration read it, the president could impose tariffs on any product, from any country, at any rate, for any duration—and change the terms at will. Trump used it to hit China with duties as high as 145 percent and to punish Brazil with 40 percent tariffs over the prosecution of its former president Jair Bolsonaro. The only prerequisite was a declaration of emergency the administration said courts couldn’t review. The replacement tools all come with constraints: rate caps, expiration dates, or mandatory investigations by federal agencies before tariffs can take effect.
- Congress designed the replacement as a leash. In 1971, President Richard Nixon invoked IEEPA’s predecessor—the Trading with the Enemy Act—to impose a temporary 10 percent tariff that might address the U.S. balance of payments. Three years later, Congress responded with Section 122: tariffs capped at 15 percent, expiring in 150 days, requiring a balance-of-payments finding. The provision channeled unilateral executive tariff power into a bounded, time-limited authority. Trump now invokes the very statute Congress wrote to constrain the kind of power the court just told him he never had.
- The appointees vs. the appointer. Gorsuch and Barrett joined Roberts in applying the “major questions” doctrine—the principle that actions of vast economic significance require clear congressional authorization. The court used the same framework to strike down the Biden administration’s student-loan forgiveness plan. In consolidated patrimonial systems—where loyalty to the leader overrides institutional roles—courts don’t issue rulings like Friday’s. In Hungary, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s courts don’t do this. In Russia, President Vladimir Putin’s certainly don’t.
- The 150-day clock. Section 122 tariffs expire in mid-July. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said expanded authorities under Sections 232 and 301 would produce “virtually unchanged tariff revenue in 2026.” But 301 investigations take months, and Section 232 requires agency findings. The Supreme Court essentially told Congress that tariff policy is its to own. With midterm elections approaching, a vote to extend them becomes a fraught proposition. The ruling forces a question the administration avoided for a year: Does the tariff regime have legislative support, or did it only ever rest on one man’s signature?
- Billions, illegally collected. Economists at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School estimate the government collected over $175 billion under IEEPA. The ruling declared those collections illegal but offered no guidance on refunds. Trump told reporters the matter would need to be litigated “for the next two years.” Over 1,500 companies have filed claims in the U.S. Court of International Trade. Trade lawyers expect the process to stretch on for years—and consumers who paid higher prices face an even steeper path to compensation.
For a year, Trump wielded tariff authority with no rate caps, no expiration dates, and no need for congressional involvement: the starkest instrument of what Stephen Hanson has detailed here in The Signal as patrimonial governance—where a leader treats the state as a personal possession and wields its powers at will. The court just forced that authority back into institutional channels: investigations, time limits, legislative votes.
These are the procedural frictions that patrimonial leaders, around the world and down through history, have worked hardest to eliminate—and that constitutional systems have depended on to function. Every single tariff statute the U.S. Congress has ever written to delegate trade power to the American president came with strings attached. IEEPA, as Trump read it, had none. That reading is now dead. The instruments that remain are, by design, slower, weaker, and shared. Whether they stay that way depends on whether congressional legislators treat the court’s ruling as a reassertion of their constitutional authority—or comply with the relentless pressure that’ll be coming from the White House and hand it back. … See “The custom of dons.”
Meanwhile
- Double diplomacy. U.S. envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner sat across from Iranian negotiators and Russian-Ukrainian delegations in Geneva this week—two high-stakes talks, in the same city, on the same day. The Iran table produced what both sides called “guiding principles” for a deal. The Ukraine table ended abruptly on its second day, after just two hours, with Kyiv accusing Moscow of stalling. By Thursday, Trump had given Iran 10 to 15 days to reach an agreement—and the Pentagon may be preparing to strike within days. … See “Two tables in Geneva.”
- ‘Rex v. Mountbatten-Windsor.’ On his 66th birthday, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor became the first senior British royal arrested in nearly 400 years. Thames Valley Police held him for 11 hours on suspicion of misconduct in public office—the allegation that he shared confidential government documents with the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein while serving as Britain’s trade envoy. Police are still searching Mountbatten-Windsor’s former home and expect the operation to continue through Monday. If prosecutors charge him, the case will go to court as the king versus Mountbatten-Windsor—the younger brother tried under the authority of the elder. … See “A whole other crime.”
- Moon-bound. Four astronauts entered quarantine in Houston on Friday, as NASA targets March 6 for the launch of Artemis II—a 10-day, 600,000-mile flyby of the Moon, and the first crewed lunar mission since Apollo 17 in 1972. The crew—NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch, along with the Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen—will travel farther from Earth than any humans in history. Glover will become the first black astronaut on a lunar mission; Koch, the first woman beyond Earth’s orbit—and Hansen, the first non-American. A successful second fueling test on Wednesday cleared the final major technical hurdle. The crew will fly to the Kennedy Space Center next week, and if a flight-readiness review goes well, strap in. Fifty-four years is a long time away.
Your reading list for a changing world
Browse The Signal’s bookshop—organized into collections that track key themes in our investigations of current affairs: what’s driving the information wars, why societies are fracturing, how power keeps reinventing itself. Contributors’ titles alongside books we've featured in our coverage.
Features
‘A casino in your pocket’
What’s online gambling doing to American society? Gerda Reith on the new “ecosystem” tech, finance, and marketing firms are cultivating together.
