The Supreme Court Struck Down Tariffs. Here's What 5 Analytical Lenses Found.
On February 20, the Supreme Court struck down IEEPA tariffs. The administration pivoted within hours to a 15% flat tariff under Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974 — authority that expires in 150 days. We ran the transition through 5 macro lenses, producing 10 signals, 5 cross-lens themes, and 5 paired conditional markets. The headline finding: tariffs transmit as a consumption tax, not industrial policy.
Only 6% of tariff costs passed to consumers after 12 months
Authority expires ~July 24, 2026
Lost during 12 months of maximum tariff protection
Import prices — tariffs as consumption tax
The Supreme Court's February 20 ruling in United States Chamber of Commerce v. United States struck down the administration's use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to impose broad-based tariffs on trading partners. The decision was 6-3. Within hours, the administration signed a proclamation invoking Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974, imposing a 15% flat tariff on most imports — down from the layered IEEPA rates that had approached Smoot-Hawley levels. Section 122 authority expires after 150 days, placing the expiration around July 24, 2026.
We built 5 macro-specific analytical lenses to assess the transition: trade transmission, inflation regime, labor dynamics, financial conditions, and global spillover. Each lens consumed FRED economic data, FOMC transcripts, Beige Book observations, and trade data. Each produced 2 signal assessments with evidence levels. The result: 10 signals that describe an economy in suspended animation — absorbing a historic trade policy shock through mechanisms that are effective in the short term but unsustainable by design.
The conditional market analysis then quantified what happens if tariffs persist past July 24 versus if they expire. The answer is unambiguous: tariff persistence materially increases price-level risk (+35pp on import prices, +27pp on goods CPI) but has essentially zero effect on manufacturing employment (+4pp). Tariffs are functioning as a consumption tax on imported goods, not as industrial policy that generates jobs.
View the full signal dashboard, conditional pairs, and cross-lens themes
10 signals. 5 conditional market pairs. Interactive analysis page.
1. Price Transmission: Tariffs as a Consumption Tax
Only 6% of tariff costs passed to consumers after 12 months. Firms absorbing ~18-20pp of combined tariff and dollar cost pressure through margin compression.
No reshoring activity. Manufacturing employment declined 81K. Section 122's 150-day limit discourages multi-year capital investment.
FOMC staff directly attributes core goods inflation to tariff effects. Demand remains tepid. Services inflation continues to decelerate.
Expectations declining. Services disinflation ongoing. Section 122's statutory limit bounds the persistence window. But Section 232/301 tariffs create a permanent elevated floor.
The most striking finding across the committee analysis is the near-complete absence of tariff pass-through to consumer prices. After 12 months of tariffs that, at their peak under IEEPA, approached Smoot-Hawley levels, the non-petroleum import price index shows just 6% pass-through. Firms appear to be absorbing approximately 18-20 percentage points of combined tariff and dollar cost pressure through margin compression.
This absorption is not sustainable. Beige Book contacts across multiple Federal Reserve districts report that firms which initially absorbed tariff costs are beginning to pass them through as pre-tariff inventories become exhausted. The 2-6 month timeline for inventory depletion is the ticking clock beneath the surface stability.
Meanwhile, the inflation-regime lens classifies current inflation as COST_PUSH with core PCE at 2.7% — above target but moderating. Persistence risk is assessed as MODERATING, partly because Section 122 has a defined statutory endpoint. But the permanent Section 232 tariffs (50% on steel and aluminum) and Section 301 China-specific tariffs create an elevated price floor that persists regardless of the Section 122 outcome.
2. Financial and Currency Channels: Paradoxical Calm
NFCI at -0.568 — the most accommodative value in the data window. Spreads below median. Lending normalized. VIX declining.
HY spreads compressed 31bp in 3 months to 288bp. Defaults declining. Primary issuance markets functioning normally.
Dollar down 7.6% YoY to 117.5. BOJ normalizing. Capital appears to be rotating from US assets. Asymmetric partner impacts.
July 2026 cliff risk. Fragile tariff-dollar offset equilibrium. Capital rotation. Mitigated by stable Treasury markets.
On currency, the trade-weighted dollar has declined 7.6% year-over-year to 117.5. This dollar weakness should, in theory, add 2-3 percentage points to import costs — an inflationary impulse. But the tariff reduction from IEEPA to Section 122 levels is approximately offsetting the FX pressure, creating a temporary neutral equilibrium on import prices. This offset is mechanically temporary — once the tariff rate stabilizes, any further dollar depreciation will flow through unmasked.
3. Real Economy: Protection Without Employment
NFP 6-month average at just +14K against ~100K breakeven. JOLTS openings down 940K in 12 months. Openings-to-unemployed ratio below 1.0.
AHE at 3.7% YoY — within the stable range. Moderating bias from quits rate at 2.0% and tariff-driven real wage squeeze. No spiral dynamics.
The broader labor market is loosening through a demand-side channel: reduced hiring rather than increased layoffs. Initial claims remain benign at a 219,000 four-week average. The economy is softening in an orderly, non-disruptive manner — the labor market is not generating distress that feeds into credit deterioration, and financial conditions are not tightening in ways that would amplify employment losses. This dual-orderly dynamic provides a cushion that allows the tariff absorption equilibrium to persist longer than it otherwise would.
What If Tariffs Persist?
Polymarket prices tariff persistence at approximately 75%. The question "what would happen if blanket tariffs survive past July 24?" is precisely what conditional markets are designed to answer. We generated 5 paired markets, each with an IF TRUE (tariffs persist) and IF FALSE (tariffs expire) branch, then ran a model ensemble to estimate probabilities for each branch independently.
The causal effect delta — the difference between the IF TRUE and IF FALSE probability — measures how much tariff persistence causally affects each downstream outcome. The results reveal a clear hierarchy of transmission channels.
July 24: When Everything Reprices
All five conditional pairs share the same underlying condition: whether blanket tariffs survive past July 24, 2026. This date functions as the nexus where every channel's trajectory is determined. Congressional action before this date — to extend, replace, or allow Section 122 to lapse — will simultaneously resolve the outlook for import prices, consumer inflation, the dollar, credit conditions, and (to a minimal degree) manufacturing employment.
The analysis surfaced a key paradox about this convergence: the legal clarity that calmed financial markets simultaneously froze real-economy investment decisions. No firm will commit to multi-year reshoring capital expenditure for a 5-month tariff. The same information that reduced financial uncertainty amplified real-economy paralysis. Financial conditions are loose, credit is easing — but firms have access to cheap capital and are choosing not to deploy it into new hiring, because the tariff regime's uncertain duration makes labor commitments unattractive relative to automation investments.
The monitoring triggers to watch: Congressional trade legislation (any introduced bills to extend, replace, or codify tariffs), the monthly import price index (first post-SCOTUS data due March 14), initial claims exceeding 250K sustained (shift from orderly loosening to dislocation), and the trade-weighted dollar approaching the 112 level flagged as potentially disorderly. All roads lead to July 24.
Explore the full interactive macro analysis
Signal dashboard, conditional pairs table, cross-lens themes, and overall assessment.
How This Works
The macro analysis pipeline mirrors our equity analysis architecture but adapted for macroeconomic policy events:
5 macro-specific lenses — trade transmission, inflation regime, labor dynamics, financial conditions, and global spillover. Each with a defined analytical scope, 2 signal definitions, evidence ladder criteria, and monitoring triggers. The lenses consumed FRED economic data, FOMC transcripts, staff projections, and Federal Reserve Beige Book observations.
Conditional market pairs — each market has two branches sharing identical resolution criteria but conditioned on opposite outcomes of the triggering event (tariffs persist vs. tariffs expire). The unconditional probability auto-updates when the external probability changes: P(Y) = P(Y|T) × P(T) + P(Y|F) × P(F).
Split-prompt ensemble — 9 independent reasoning perspectives per branch (3 Opus + 3 Sonnet + 3 Haiku), each reasoning from first principles without seeing other models' outputs. Aggregated by median with model agreement measured as 1 minus normalized standard deviation.