The court sends the invoice back

On Friday 20 February the Supreme Court decided Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump by six votes to three². Chief Justice Roberts wrote for the majority, joined by Justices Barrett, Gorsuch, Jackson, Kagan and Sotomayor; Justice Kavanaugh wrote the principal dissent, joined by Justices Thomas and Alito¹. The holding was short: the emergency-powers law the administration had used does not authorise the President to impose tariffs¹.

The reasoning was shorter still. The power to “regulate… importation” is not the power to tax, and tariffs are a tax, which under the Constitution belongs to Congress. As the majority put it, “had Congress intended to convey the distinct and extraordinary power to impose tariffs, it would have done so expressly”¹.

Institutions beat influencers, again. Within hours there was a replacement: a 10% tariff under Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974, effective 24 February, capped by statute at 15% and at 150 days unless Congress extends it¹. Markets took the day calmly; stocks rose and Treasury yields edged up, with investors estimating that the government might owe $150 billion to $200 billion in refunds³. The ruling did not decide refunds at all¹.

The invoice tells you who paid. Customs duties are collected from importers, and the national accounts show how large the bill became. On the Bureau of Economic Analysis series, federal customs receipts ran at an annual rate of about $89 billion in the fourth quarter of 2024 and about $367 billion a year later⁵. That is the line in the chart below, and it is not an opinion about trade policy. It is a record of who sent money to the Treasury.

The refund follows the paperwork, not the price. Customs built a portal for IEEPA refunds, with interest⁴. Its own guidance is blunt: “CBP is only able to refund IEEPA duties to the Importer of Record” or a party that importer designates⁴. If a retailer passed the tariff on to you at the till, the refund goes to the retailer. That is not a scandal; it is how invoices work. It is also why “the tariff was struck down” and “you got your money back” are different sentences.

Hindsight. The series did not fall back to 2024 levels: receipts were still running at about $306 billion a year in the second quarter of 2026⁵. Duties under other laws stayed in force, and the replacement levy took over part of the job¹. The court changed who may decide. It did not change the habit of deciding.