I woke up to the US Supreme Court gutting the Trump tariffs. Frankly, the odds were always 50–50. Now that the hammer has dropped, here are my observations:
1. Three Trump-appointed judges just torpedoed Trump’s own signature move. Somewhere, Jerome Powell is probably exhaling in quiet satisfaction.
2. Let’s forget the individual for a moment. What’s astounding is that the world’s “second largest democracy” sleepwalked into handing quasi-autocratic powers to its President. Emergency-grade executive authority was being used like a casual policy screwdriver, and the institutional machinery mostly shrugged—until today. The system has belatedly remembered it has a spine.
3. Trump’s ego is Everest; his sense of injury is now Mariana-Trench deep. This episode is nowhere near its final act. A counter-strike—legal, political, or in some obscure regulatory alley—is almost guaranteed.
4. He is expected to visit China in April. Trade(read: tariff) negotiations are likely to be on the plate, alongside Peking ducks. The wounded mountain lion ( no, I am not calling him that based on the colour of his hair, trust me) is going into negotiations with its claws pulled out.
5. Like Neelambari in Padayappa, expect him to now turn even more aggressive than ever. I feel this SC ruling has dramatically increased the probability of a war with Iran. Cornered power is always the most dangerous.
6. American consumers—ironically, many who voted on nationalist fervor—are left holding the bag. Post-Covid inflation already doubled grocery bills. Tariffs made that worse. Now, even if tariffs roll back, retail prices won’t magically fall. Basic market behaviour: cost increases are passed on instantly; cost reductions trickle back slowly—if at all. Distributors and retailers will cite “higher operating costs” and pocket the spread. The “new normal” shelves are here to stay. And historically, taxes and tariffs have been inflation’s most reliable accelerants. This time won’t be an exception.
7. India, officially, should be unaffected. After all, we loudly insisted the tariff hikes were irrelevant. If we were so immune on the way up, logically we should be immune on the way down too. But if the Nifty wails “hypocrisy” on Monday morning, don’t blame Trump
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