The Supreme Court removed the statute, not the tariffs

This is analysis, not a straight report, and the distinction matters for how the February 20 ruling should be read. The Supreme Court held six to three that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act does not authorise the tariffs imposed under it. That is a statutory holding about one statute. It is not a ruling on the tariffs as policy, and it does not by itself determine what duties apply tomorrow.

What the court decided, and what it refused to

Adam Feldman's day-by-day breakdown for SCOTUSblog characterises the majority as resting on the view that a tariff regime of that scope requires authorisation Congress has plainly given, rather than authority a president can derive from an emergency-powers statute. Read that way, the holding is about the limits of what an emergency declaration can carry, which is a narrower and more durable principle than any single tariff rate.

The refund question is the one with a number attached, and it is the one the ruling leaves furthest from resolution. Duties already collected under a statute later held unauthorised raise a claim against the government, and a court that decides the underlying authority without deciding the remedy has not settled who gets money back. Importers will be arguing that question in the lower courts for some time.

For India the ruling is not abstract. On February 9, eleven days before the judgment, the United States and India had announced a framework that removed an additional 25% tariff and cut the reciprocal rate on India from 25% to 18%. If those duties were collected under IEEPA, the statutory basis for them is precisely what the court questioned. The framework is unaffected; the legal instrument used to impose the duties under it may be.