Phyrex|11月 26, 2025 09:29
Is the current environment a reversal or a rebound? If there is a reversal, will everything be smooth sailing? If there is a rebound, where is the next danger point? (2) Tariff
At present, the Supreme Court of the United States is hearing the case of the legality of the Trump government's imposition of global tariffs based on the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA).
The oral debate was held on November 5, 2025, and many justices (including conservatives) expressed deep concern about Trump's use of vague emergency power to impose tariffs, believing that this might give the president excessive power, similar to the unlimited power to set tariffs. The lower court has ruled three times that these tariffs are illegal. The Federal Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on August 29, 2025 that some tariffs should be suspended, but the Trump government has repeatedly extended the implementation through administrative orders.
Although the Supreme Court has not yet announced its final ruling, the White House has prepared contingency plans, including maintaining some tariffs through other legal means. If IEEPA is declared invalid or severely restricted, forcing the Trump government to adopt a scheme similar to Article 232 of the Trade Expansion Law, the tariff itself will not disappear, but its structure, coverage and name will change significantly.
Firstly, the scope of tariffs will be forced to narrow down.
IEEPA allows the President to impose taxes on global goods under the guise of a national emergency, while the legal authorization of Section 232 is narrower and must strictly revolve around national security. This means that tariffs that originally covered the world may be compressed into more strategically sensitive areas such as steel, aluminum, electric vehicles, photovoltaics, semiconductors, and key minerals. It represents a shift from comprehensive tax increases to key chain tax increases, with a more focused focus and deeper impact on the industry.
Secondly, the tariff rates and structures will be more differentiated.
Under IEEPA, tariffs are often imposed at a uniform rate, such as "an additional 10% for global goods," while if shifted to Section 232, tariffs will be directed towards risk levels or industry sensitivity, forming a clear gradient. For example, high tariffs of 60% -100% may be maintained on Chinese electric vehicles, while traditional industries such as steel and aluminum may be maintained at 15% -25%. Tariffs on allied countries may be reduced or changed to milder surcharges. Overall, the tax rate may not necessarily decrease, but it will present a structure of "targeted and narrower scope".
The most crucial thing is that structural adjustments may not alleviate the pressure of tariffs on inflation, but may be more destructive in certain areas.
Once tariffs are focused on the core chains of electric vehicles, energy, key technologies, and manufacturing, the transmission of costs becomes faster and inflationary pressures become more apparent. The increase in fixed costs brought about by the re layout of the supply chain will also drive up enterprise costs and US price levels in the long run. So even if the Supreme Court rejects IEEPA, what the market may face is not the end of tariffs, but a reconfiguration of tariffs. This reconfiguration will not only fail to reduce inflationary pressures, but also be more targeted and difficult to reverse.
In terms of quantity, the current average effective tariff rate for US imports is roughly in the range of 14% -15%, with over half of it directly coming from IEEPA related tariffs. If the Supreme Court rejects IEEPA, theoretically the average tariff level in the United States could briefly fall to around 6-7%, but at the same time, the White House would face potential tax refund liabilities in the billions or even billions of dollars range. How to handle this portion of cash flow will itself cause new disturbances to corporate profits, fiscal deficits, and market pricing of US assets.
Even if the nominal tariff rate drops in the short term, it does not mean that inflationary pressures and risk premiums will disappear simultaneously. It will still be one of the biggest structural risks in the macro environment for the next three years.
This is not the end. If IEEPA is cancelled, it will be a great blow to the prestige of Trump government and increase the uncertainty in the market. After all, IEEPA is the most powerful legal basis in Trump's tariff system. Once it is vetoed by the Supreme Court, it means that the highest judicial authority has formally restricted the president's emergency economic power, and this balance itself will be interpreted by the market as weakening the policy implementation.
The Trump government most relies on the policy model of "executive order priority, rapid decision-making, and no need for congressional approval". The rejection of IEEPA is equivalent to telling the market president that the executive power is not unlimited, and his policy may be reversed by the judiciary at any time. This situation will result in two outcomes.
First, Trump will certainly fight back.
According to Trump's political style in the past few years, as long as he encounters judicial resistance, he will usually choose a tough response. Publicly criticizing the court, inciting public opinion, emphasizing the deep government's obstruction of economic recovery, and even suggesting that the court harms American interests once again. This intense political reaction will further exacerbate market concerns about policy stability, as investors are most afraid of a public conflict between administrative and judicial powers.
Secondly, the market will begin to worry about policy discontinuity.
Once the Supreme Court rejects IEEPA, the White House will immediately turn to Section 232 or other legal frameworks, but this approach of switching from Law A to Law B and then to Law C will make it difficult for businesses and markets to determine what the next step is. This policy discontinuity will increase the inventory cost, import decision-making cost, and supply chain adjustment cost of enterprises, and will also be directly reflected in the risk premium of the capital market.
The same concerns can also be seen from the enterprise side. During the 2025 financial report conference call, the management's sentiment regarding tariffs fluctuated sharply at multiple policy adjustment points, with negative discussions rapidly rising at windows such as the "125% China tariff", "pharmaceutical and truck tariffs", and "Supreme Court hearings", indicating that policy uncertainty has penetrated into the operational level of enterprises.
At the same time, the number of companies mentioning tariff risks continued to rise throughout the year, especially after key tariff events, which further strengthened the market's sensitivity to policy paths. In this environment, policy continuity itself has become a core variable affecting business prospects and market volatility.
So, policy instability is also one of the most concerning issues for risk markets, especially in the context of high interest rates and high fiscal deficits in the United States. As long as policies are unstable, there is a high risk of upward pressure on long-term interest rates, which could impact the valuation of technology stocks, capital expenditures in the AI sector, and the emotional premium of Bitcoin.
Therefore, if IEEPA is cancelled by the Supreme Court, its impact will not only be an adjustment of tariff structure, but will also make the market realize that the US policy framework for the next three years will be more difficult to predict and more susceptible to political conflicts, judicial intervention, and administrative counterattacks.
This uncertainty will bring sustained pressure to risk assets, making it difficult for the market rebound to evolve into a true reversal. Unless Trump completely cancels the tariff, it is almost impossible.
Combining the previous monetary policy with the current tariff uncertainty, it can be seen that the core contradiction in the current environment is not whether there are favorable conditions, but whether the favorable conditions can be sustained. At most, the Federal Reserve will only withdraw from tightening, and it is far from clear easing. In terms of tariffs, even if IEEPA is rejected, the new tariff framework will quickly be added, posing new pressures on inflation and supply chains.
Under such a combination, the market can certainly have a periodic rebound, but to define this as a stable reversal, the prerequisite is at least:
1. The path of interest rate cuts is clearer
2. More stable policies
3. Inflation has returned to a controllable and predictable downward trajectory.
Before these three points appear, consider the current market as a game zone in a rebound, rather than a safe reversal stage. What's more troublesome is that the IEEPA's ruling time and the Federal Reserve's policy pace are likely to overlap. The Supreme Court is likely to give a final ruling in the first half of 2026, which coincides with the market's most sensitive window for the pace of interest rate cuts in 2026.
On one hand, the space for interest rate cuts in 2026 is still limited by the dot matrix, and on the other hand, the tariff framework may be forced to be restructured. The combination of insufficient monetary easing but increasing policy uncertainty is more like a high volatility oscillation range for risk assets.
For assets such as AI technology stocks and BTC that rely most on expectations and duration premiums, this time window may actually become the next truly dangerous point. I have previously written about vague judgments about 2026, and the biggest risk is in the first five months.
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