‘Murky
Waters’ for Global Businesses After Trump’s Tariff Loss
Even
after the Supreme Court invalidated many of the president’s levies, foreign
leaders and executives assume that U.S. tariffs are here to stay, in one form
or another.
Patricia
Cohen
By
Patricia Cohen
Patricia
Cohen covers the global economy from London.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/21/business/economy/tariffs-supreme-court-global-busines-reaction.html
Feb. 21,
2026, 12:00 a.m. ET
The
watershed U.S. Supreme Court ruling on Friday that struck down President
Trump’s go-to method of imposing tariffs upended a cornerstone of the
administration’s trade policy, heaping additional uncertainty on trading
partners and businesses across the globe.
Just how
this latest jolt will affect international commerce and filter down to prices,
jobs and growth in countries around the world remains a big question mark. So
far, the global economy has proved resilient amid the political and economic
turmoil wrought by Mr. Trump’s unpredictable trade moves since he took office
last year.
At the
moment, most economists are betting that, whatever the legal consequences, U.S.
economic policy will not shift meaningfully. Foreign leaders and business
executives are, for the most part, operating under the assumption that as long
as Mr. Trump is in office, tariffs are here to stay in one form or another.
On
Friday, in a news conference after the Supreme Court ruling, Mr. Trump said he
would invoke a portion of law known as Section 122, which no president has ever
used, to impose an across-the-board 10 percent tariff starting in a matter of
days.
“The
Supreme Court ruled on constitutional limits, not trade policy,” Carsten
Brzeski, the global head of macro for ING Research, wrote in a note. “Trump’s
tariff agenda survives with new legal foundations and a messy transition
period.”
Mr.
Brzeski and several other analysts said they did not expect to immediately
alter their forecasts for global growth and trade because of the Supreme
Court’s decision.
Mr. Trump
may not be able to impose tariffs as rapidly or broadly as he has to date,
using a 1977 law that gives the president emergency powers. There are other
provisions he can use to issue more targeted tariffs, either on his own or in
concert with the Republican-controlled Congress.
Foreign
governments, so far, have been circumspect in their public comments, saying
they were reviewing the decision and its potential impact.
But as
tempting as it might be for U.S. trading partners to contemplate reopening
tariff negotiations, policy analysts said most were unlikely to take that
route. For starters, the chances of wrangling a better deal are slight, and
merely asking to renegotiate might irk a president who has already admitted
that his policy decisions are sometimes made out of pique.
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Mr.
Trump, for example, admitted that he raised tariffs on Switzerland to 39
percent, from 31 percent, because the Swiss president “rubbed me the wrong
way.”
Additionally,
as unsettling and unwelcome as U.S. tariffs have been, the current rates at
least have the virtue of eliminating some of the uncertainty that enveloped
businesses and governments last year, when Mr. Trump’s tariff policies
sometimes changed between breakfast and dinner.
Nonetheless,
uncertainty is likely to continue. As William Bain, head of trade policy at the
British Chambers of Commerce, said, the ruling “does little to clear the murky
waters for business.”
Other
geopolitical concerns have sometimes overshadowed tariffs in relations with the
United States. In Europe, national security, the Atlantic alliance and defense
cooperation are all pressing priorities given the war in Ukraine, Russia’s
aggressive stance toward Europe and Mr. Trump’s attempts to acquire Greenland.
Japan and
South Korea, which are also dependent on U.S. security guarantees, are
interested in preserving their relationship with Washington at a time of rising
tensions with China.
With the
fate of many trade agreements already agreed upon now up in the air, the
court’s ruling will also be a factor in upcoming trade negotiations. The United
States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, which Mr. Trump signed into law during his
first term, comes up for review this summer.
Analysts
and traders are also considering the impact of the ruling on the large debt
that the United States has racked up. Tariffs have generated more than $200
billion in revenue since April.
Raphael
Bostic, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, said on Friday that
the economic impact of the ruling would depend on whether companies would
receive any tariff refunds. He also said it would depend on how companies
changed their operations in light of the decision.
“Is there
a requirement to pay back the firms that have paid in the tariffs? If so,
that’s a lot of disruption,” Mr. Bostic said.
Many
firms in the United States and elsewhere have already pushed for refunds. The
research firm Capital Economics estimated that if the U.S. Treasury was forced
to issue repayments, the cost would run to $120 billion, or 0.5 percent of
gross domestic product in the United States.
Juan
Pellerano-Rendón, a logistics expert and chief marketing officer at Swap, a
software company, said businesses should not expect a windfall. Refunds, if
they happen, could take months or years.
“No
serious operator is building their year around a potential tariff refund,” Mr.
Pellerano-Rendón said. Most companies have already taken higher shipping,
compliance and supply chain operations costs into account. “There isn’t a
hidden 30 percent margin waiting to be unlocked if tariffs disappear tomorrow,”
he said.
Matthew
Ryan, head of market strategy at the global financial services firm Ebury,
noted that there was a sell-off of the dollar immediately after the Supreme
Court’s ruling.
“The move
probably reflects heightened fiscal concerns,” he said, “as markets fret that
the massive tariff refunds could create a significant U.S. budget shortfall, a
higher deficit and an increase in debt issuance.”
The
Treasury bond market, though, where the U.S. federal government’s debt is
bought and sold by investors, reacted to the news with relative calm. Yields on
government debt, a measure of borrowing costs, have barely budged.
Justice
Brett M. Kavanaugh, in a dissent, warned that the refund process would be a
“mess.”
Mr.
Trump’s wide-ranging tariffs have already begun to reconfigure trade patterns.
Agathe Demarais, a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign
Relations, noted that American allies and adversaries had been shifting away
from the United States.
“China
recorded a $1.2 trillion global trade surplus in 2025, the highest ever on
record by any country — highlighting how Chinese firms successfully rerouted
exports to other markets,” she said.
Over the
past year, countries around the world have stepped up efforts to sign trade
agreements that do not include the United States, such as the European Union’s
recent deals with four South American nations and with India.
For all
of the drama surrounding Mr. Trump’s tariffs, global trade still grew 4 percent
overall last year. And the U.S. trade deficit in goods last year reached a
record high.
“The
point is trade has not collapsed,” said Neil Shearing, group chief economist at
Capital Economics.
“The
global economy has proved relatively resilient to tariff uncertainty and rising
trade barriers,” said Eswar Prasad, a professor of trade policy and economics
at Cornell University, “so the effects on global growth are in any event likely
to be quite muted.”
Colby
Smith and Joe Rennison contributed reporting from New York.
Patricia
Cohen writes about global economics for The Times and is based in London.
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