Digi Trade Digest #156

GLOBAL

SCOTUSBlog: Supreme Court strikes down tariffs - Amy Howe

In a major ruling on presidential power, the Supreme Court on Friday struck down the sweeping tariffs that President Donald Trump imposed in a series of executive orders. By a vote of 6-3, the justices ruled that the tariffs exceed the powers given to the president by Congress under a 1977 law providing him the authority to regulate commerce during national emergencies created by foreign threats.The court did not weigh in, however, on whether or how the federal government should provide refunds to the importers who have paid the tariffs, estimated in 2025 at more than $200 billion.

In a splintered decision on Friday, the Supreme Court agreed with the challengers that IEEPA did not give Trump the power to impose the tariffs. “Based on two words separated by 16 others in … IEEPA—‘regulate’ and ‘importation’—the President asserts the independent power to impose tariffs on imports from any country, of any product, at any rate, for any amount of time,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote. “Those words,” he continued, “cannot bear such weight.” “IEEPA,” Roberts added, “contains no reference to tariffs or duties.” Moreover, “until now no President has read IEEPA to confer such power.”

Politico: Supreme Court strikes down Trump’s tariffs - Doug Palmer, Josh Gerstein and Daniel Desrochers

The Supreme Court on Friday struck down President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs — a major repudiation of a core piece of Trump’s economic program.

The 6-3 decision is a rare instance of the conservative-led court reining in Trump’s expansive use of executive power. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Neil Gorsuch joined the court’s three liberals in the majority.

“The President asserts the extraordinary power to unilaterally impose tariffs of unlimited amount, duration, and scope. In light of the breadth, history, and constitutional context of that asserted authority, he must identify clear congressional authorization to exercise it,” Roberts wrote, declaring that the 1977 law Trump cited to justify the import duties “falls short” of the Congressional approval that would be needed.

The ruling wipes out the 10 percent tariff Trump imposed last April on nearly every country in the world, as well as specific, higher tariffs on some of the top U.S. trading partners, including Canada, Mexico, China, the European Union, Japan and South Korea.

PC: Deals Made Under Repealed Tariffs Should Be Reconsidered

The Trump administration signed an Agreement on Reciprocal Trade (ART) with Indonesia on February 19, 2026, following deals with Argentina, Bangladesh, Cambodia, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Malaysia. As with the other six reciprocal trade deals, the U.S.-Indonesia ART imposes a number of stringent commitments on Indonesia, in exchange for which the U.S. agrees to reduce its “reciprocal” tariff on Indonesian exports from a threatened 32% to 19%.

Before the ink was dry on this deal, however, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the “reciprocal” tariffs imposed by the Trump administration under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA).

With the 19% IEEPA tariffs forming the basis of the Indonesia deal invalidated by the Supreme Court decision, the future of this and other deals is uncertain. Experts have questioned the legality of the ARTs in the wake of the decision, but the Trump administration has made clear that they intend to recreate the tariffs through alternative legal authorities — though these may also face scrutiny before U.S. courts — and that they consider their reciprocal trade arrangements as separate from the IEEPA tariffs.

At the time of this writing, President Trump has invoked a separate authority known as Section 122 that allows for 15% tariffs for a period of up to 150 days. He has implemented a blanket 10% tariff, with threats of 15%, and has indicated that the administration will pursue more durable tariffs through alternate routes.

Given these chaotic circumstances, the supposed benefits of the ART for Indonesia — tariff relief to its exporters — are illusory because the high “reciprocal” tariff rates are no longer relevant. But the costs of the deal, if Indonesia chooses to comply, are all too real.

The following review of select terms in the deal shows that Indonesia was forced to make painful concessions that benefit big, U.S-based multinational corporations. Contrary to President Trump’s promises, the deal is not crafted to protect U.S. jobs but instead will serve to further line the pockets of President Trump’s billionaire friends, advance a neocolonial resource power grab, and undermine public interest regulation in Indonesia.

CBSNews: U.S. trade representative says White House expects to “stand by” trade deals after Supreme Court ruling - Ibrahim Aksoy

U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said Sunday that the White House expects to “stand by” the trade deal agreements it has signed with its partners despite the Supreme Court’s Friday ruling that could disrupt the Trump administration’s tariff policy.

“We expect our partners to stand by them,” Greer said on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan.” “And I haven’t heard anyone yet come to me and say, ‘the deal’s off.’ They want to see how this plays out.”

TheGuardian: Trump tariffs: what ‘powerful’ trade weapons are at the US president’s disposal? - Lisa O’Carroll

Donald Trump did not carry through his threat to introduce 15% tariffs overnight.

However, he did impose 10% tariffs on imports into the US on Tuesday, and the threatened 15% may be the least of his trade partners’ worries.

On Monday, the US president threatened to use tariffs in a “much more powerful and obnoxious way”, and he has several trade bazookas he can fire after the supreme court forced him to stop collecting tariffs from more than 90 countries.

Here are the trade weapons at Trump’s disposal.

CSIS: State of Play: The Global Impact of the SCOTUS Decision on IEEPA Tariffs

Although the legal picture is somewhat clearer, the economic and diplomatic consequences will unfold over time and depend on how the administration and U.S. trading partners respond. CSIS experts assess how governments and key sectors around the world are likely to interpret and react to the decision.

The article assesses the impacts of the IEEPA decision on Africa, the Americas, Australia, China, the EU, India, Japan, South Korea, West Asia, and South East Asia.

Hinrich Foundation: The new architects of digital trade - Stephanie Honey

The architects of global commerce have traditionally been economic heavyweights: the United States, the European Union, and increasingly, China. In a rich irony, as the original drafter of the “gold standard” e-commerce chapter of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), the US has largely stepped aside from international digital trade rulemaking in recent years. In 2023, the Biden administration withdrew its support for data governance provisions in the plurilateral World Trade Organization Joint Initiative (JI) negotiations on e-commerce, claiming to need “policy space”; the Trump administration has so far declined to co-sponsor the resulting E-Commerce Agreement, despite participating in the negotiations.³

In that relative vacuum, however, a club of first-mover small and mid-sized Indo-Pacific economies is working hard to promote an innovative template for digital trade rules. The model was pioneered in the 2020 Digital Economy Partnership Agreement (DEPA), involving New Zealand, Singapore, and Chile. DEPA is unusual, not only as the first dedicated digital agreement, but also as an open plurilateral, complete with an accession mechanism and a modular structure — a set of building blocks that countries can adopt wholesale or integrate piecemeal into their own arrangements.

Subsequently, influenced by the DEPA model, a small group of digital-forward nations has gone on to develop a smorgasbord of broadly similar bilateral digital economy agreements, frameworks and partnerships, digital trade agreements, and digital trade chapters in free trade agreements (FTAs). These agreements have introduced even more innovative issues into digital trade policymaking, such as lawtech, e-contracts, submarine cables, labor standards, and even digital talent mobility.

NorwegianConsumerCouncil: Breaking Free

In the new report Breaking Free: Pathways to a fair technological future, the Norwegian Consumer Council has delved into enshittification and how to resist it. The report shows how this phenomenon affects both consumers and society at large, but that it is possible to turn the tide.

Politico: How the global effort to keep AI safe went off the rails - Pieter Haeck, Tom Bristow and Océane Herrero

The annual global artificial intelligence summit, which takes place in New Delhi this week, has grown from 150 to 35,000 delegates in less than three years. In the process, the original motivation for the summit — as a global conversation to agree on safeguards to keep AI technology in check — has been relegated to quiet corners of the gathering.

On the surface, the Indian organizers of this year’s event have some aspects of AI safety in mind, at least according to the lofty slogans on street billboards dotted throughout the city.

Yet the final summit declaration set to be agreed later this week will fail to include the word “safety,” according to a draft text reported exclusively by POLITICO. After the first two summits addressed catastrophic risks to humanity and threats like job losses and environmental damage, India has instead switched the focus to practical applications and dealmaking.

ASIA

PC: New Analysis of U.S.-Indonesia Trade Deal in Light of Repealed Tariffs

One day after the Trump administration signed a sweeping “reciprocal” trade deal with Indonesia, the Supreme Court of the United States struck down the tariffs imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) — the very tariffs used to pressure Indonesia into the agreement.

Facing the threat of a 32% tariff, Indonesia made significant concessions across digital policy, agriculture, health standards, and critical minerals in exchange for a 19% “reciprocal” tariff rate. With the IEEPA tariffs invalidated and replaced with a 10-15% temporary tariff, the future of the Indonesia deal and other Agreements on Reciprocal Trade (ARTs) is in question.

New analysis from Public Citizen suggests that may be for the best, as winners from this deal once again are Big Tech CEOs and other large corporate interests, not the U.S. or Indonesian people.

UnivofMelbourne: Illegal and unfair: Indonesia should not ratify Donald Trump’s tariff deals - Aristyo Darmawan

On Thursday, 19 February 2026, during Prabowo’s visit to the United States, Indonesia signed a tariff deal with the US as part of the Implementation of the Agreement toward a New Golden Age US-Indonesia Alliance. Essentially, the agreement reduced Indonesia’s tariff from 32% to 19%.

However, the very next day, Friday 20 February, the US Supreme Court dropped a bombshell, ruling that Trump Executive Order 14257, which imposed a 32% tariff on Indonesia, was illegal under the US Constitution. This has called the rationale for the newly-signed tariff deal into question.

In light of this ruling, I argue that Indonesia should not ratify the treaty.

NYT: Trump’s Trade Deal With India Has Become a Headache for Modi - Alex Travelli

When President Trump fired off a social media post on Feb. 3 to proclaim that the United States was immediately ending the extraordinary 50 percent tariff on most Indian goods exported to the United States, Indian businesses heaved a sigh of relief.

This week, further announcements from the White House turned that deal into a cluster headache for Mr. Modi. He secured a big decrease in the main tariff, to 18 percent, which is now in line with India’s main competitors in Asia. But, in exchange, the potential costs to be borne by India in terms of trade and foreign policy have turned out to be multiplying.

Reuters: US, Taiwan finalise deal to cut tariffs, boost purchases of US goods - David Lawder

Trump administration officials signed a final reciprocal trade agreement that confirmed a 15% U.S. tariff rate for imports from Taiwan, while committing Taiwan to a schedule for eliminating or lowering tariffs on nearly all U.S. goods.

The document released by the U.S. Trade Representative’s office on Thursday also commits Taiwan to significantly boost purchases of U.S. goods from 2025 through 2029, including $44.4 billion of liquefied natural gas and crude oil, $15.2 billion of civil aircraft and engines, $25.2 billion of power grid equipment and generators, marine and steelmaking equipment.

AsiaTimes: Indonesia’s Prabowo should think twice on a Trump trade pact - Bhima Yudhistira Adhinegara and Muhammad Zulfikar Rakhmat

On February 19, Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto is expected to travel to Washington to attend the inaugural Board of Peace meeting and sign an Indonesia-United States Agreement on Reciprocal Tariffs, or ART.

If he does, Indonesia will not be signing a routine trade deal. It will be entering a new model of agreement that blends tariff relief, foreign policy alignment and sweeping enforcement powers in ways that deserve far closer scrutiny.

Recent ARTs signed by other countries have followed a clear template. The US demands binding and enforceable commitments across trade, regulatory policy and strategic sectors. In return, Washington offers partial relief from its own “reciprocal” tariffs on selected products, while retaining most other tariffs already in place.

The obligations fall overwhelmingly on the non-US country, while the US obligation is limited and conditional.

AFRICA

Semafor: South Africa mining minister criticizes DRC over US minerals deal - Alexis Akwagyiram

South Africa’s mining minister criticized DR Congo for signing a minerals deal with the US, saying it threatened the sovereignty of the continent’s states by intensifying the scramble for Africa’s natural resources.

Mantashe’s remarks came days after the US announced plans to create a trade zone for critical minerals — with price floors intended to stabilize markets — to counter China’s dominance of the sector.

EUROPE

YahooFinance: EU puts US trade deal on ice after Supreme Court ruling - Raziye Akkoc

European Union lawmakers Monday put a key trade deal with the United States on hold, demanding clarity after a Supreme Court ruling struck down many of President Donald Trump’s tariffs.

The move came as Trump warned that countries seeking to “play games” with tariffs risked much higher duties.

Uncertainty has gripped markets since the Supreme Court ruled Friday that Trump does not have the authority to impose tariffs under a 1977 law he has relied on -- to which Trump responded by imposing a new 15 percent global duty on a different legal basis.

That new threat raised worries in Brussels over its implications for the US trade deal struck last July, since European officials and lawmakers say EU goods could face higher duties than under the terms of the agreement.

Parliament negotiators backed putting the deal on ice until it is clearer what the US ruling means, postponing a vote that was due to take place Tuesday.

Politico: EU loses patience following Trump’s latest tariff threat - Camille Gijs

The European Union is pushing Washington to clarify how the United States will proceed after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down President Donald Trump’s global tariffs, the EU executive said on Sunday.

“The European Commission requests full clarity on the steps the United States intends to take following the recent Supreme Court ruling on the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA),” the Commission said in a strongly worded statement issued after Trump announced Saturday he wants to impose a new global tariff rate of 15 percent.

“The current situation is not conducive to delivering ‘fair, balanced, and mutually beneficial’ transatlantic trade and investment,” the Commission said.

NYT: Europe Worries About Another Trump Blowup, This One on Tech - Jeanna Smialek

After a year filled with trade-related drama between the United States and the European Union, one outstanding gripe still has potential to fuel the fire: how the bloc regulates technology.

At the heart of that dispute is the bloc’s Digital Services Act, which requires big technology companies to take steps to prevent illegal or dangerous content on their platforms. The Trump administration, arguing that the regulations impede free speech and put up unfair barriers to American firms, has warned repeatedly that it could retaliate.

Now, European officials are beginning to fret, privately and in public, that this is merely the calm before the next Trump-created storm.

Politico: EU tech enforcer tells officials not to be scared by US threats - Eliza Gkritsi

One of the EU’s top tech enforcers on Monday sought to rally officials and civil society groups facing fire from the United States administration over the bloc’s digital rules, telling them: “Don’t let yourself be scared.”

Prabhat Agarwal, the official who heads the European Commission’s enforcement team for the Digital Services Act, made the impassioned speech to a crowd of European regulators, officials and civil society members at a conference at the University of Amsterdam.

The EU law governing online content at the biggest tech companies has been at the center of an escalating fight between the EU and the U.S. over the limits of platform regulation.

Politico: ‘Pure bullshit’: Macron slams tech giants’ claim they are defending free speech - Océane Herrero

Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday blasted social media platforms and the tech executives who run them in a fiery dismissal of their claims to be defending free speech.

The French president used a discussion on university partnerships between India and France to flay nontransparent platforms and artificial intelligence systems.

“Some of them claim to be in favor of free speech. We are in favor of free algorithms, totally transparent,” Macron said during his remarks in India. “Free speech is pure bullshit if nobody knows how you are guided through this.”

“All the algorithms have biases, we know that. There is no doubt,” he said. “And they are so impactful, when you speak about social media, that having no clue about how the algorithm is made, how it is tested and where it will guide you — the democratic biases of this could be huge.”

NYT: Spain to Investigate Social Media Giants, Escalating Trans-Atlantic Tech Dispute - Jason Horowitz

Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez of Spain said on Tuesday that his government will ask prosecutors to investigate social media giants X, Meta and TikTok for allegedly spreading child sexual abuse material generated by artificial intelligence, the latest salvo in a Europe-wide effort to regulate big tech companies.

The Spanish announcement intensifies a growing dispute between European governments and American tech companies, which have been backed by the Trump administration over efforts on the continent to limit the industry.

Politico: EU needs to abandon AI ‘doomerism,’ White House official says - Pieter Haeck

A top United States official on Wednesday told the European Union to focus more on innovation in artificial intelligence — and less on rules.

“I do think the atmosphere in the EU needs to change and be more focused on innovation, less focused on governance and less focused on doomerism,” said Sriram Krishnan, the White House’s senior policy adviser on artificial intelligence, at an event of the Tony Blair Institute on the sidelines of the India AI Impact Summit.

Krishnan reiterated the U.S. opposition to the EU’s Artificial Intelligence Act, which was adopted in 2024 and aims to mitigate risks associated with the technology.

NOYB: Digital Omnibus Report V3: Analysis of Select GDPR and ePrivacy Proposals by the Commission

On 19 November 2025, the European Commission published its proposal for the “Digital Omnibus”, subsequently sparking significant criticism and opposition. noyb conducted a thorough analysis of all the changes relevant to the GDPR and the ePrivacy Directive, which we firstly published a few days after the proposal was issued by the European Commission. The comprehensive report provides a comparison of the existing law with the Commission’s proposal and compiles all our insights. The report also discusses relevant case law and the impact on data subjects, authorities and controllers, providing real-life examples of potential consequences.

This new version, published on 24 February 2026, supplements our detailed legal analysis (version 1) and recommendations (version 2) with comments on the joint EDPB/EDPS opinion on the data part of the Digital Omnibus published on 11 February 2026.

NORTH AMERICA

USTR: Ambassador Greer Issues Statement on Supreme Court IEEPA Decision

The Supreme Court’s decision today affects one element of the Administration’s successful work to reorient the global trading system to benefit American workers and businesses. President Trump’s use of the International Economic Emergency Powers Act (“IEEPA”) was a necessary and appropriate tool to quickly and flexibly address major challenges originating from outside the United States, including the fentanyl, immigration, and trade deficit crises.

The Trump Administration is committed to continue implementing the President’s trade policy, which was at the core of his campaign and agenda. For many months, the Trump Administration has cautioned foreign trading partners and the business community that if the Supreme Court were to limit the President’s authority to impose tariffs under IEEPA, alternative tools would be implemented to address many of the issues at the heart of the President’s reciprocal tariff program. These objectives include reducing the U.S. global trade deficit in goods, reversing the lack of reciprocity by our foreign trading partners, and incentivizing the reshoring of production to the United States. Our partners have been responsive and engaged in good-faith negotiations and agreements despite the pending litigation, and we are confident that all trade agreements negotiated by President Trump will remain in effect.

IELP: What happens to all the frameworks, deals, and agreements negotiated by USTR since April 2, 2025? - Mona Paulson

With the Supreme Court ruling (6-3) that the President lacks inherent peacetime authority to impose tariffs under IEEPA, the question is what happens to the trade/security deals (informal and formal agreements) negotiated in the shadow of the IEEPA tariffs? This post explains how the US has sought to separate the authority to negotiate agreements from the authority to impose IEEPA tariffs, in terms of statutory basis and EOs. This does not change the fundamental concern about recognising the statutory basis of these deals. However, it does suggest that the executive branch anticipated that the deals could outlast the IEEPA reciprocity tariffs, to the extent that companies or trading partners did not challenge the underlying emergency in effect.

Politico: After Supreme Court ruling, White House does damage control on trade deals

Not long after President Donald Trump announced on social media he was imposing a 15 percent global tariff, U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer was on the phone with his British counterpart.

The U.K.’s top negotiator, Peter Kyle, had a plea for Greer — and an offer.

Even though the U.S. Supreme Court had just blown a hole through Trump’s trade regime, Kyle indicated Britain was prepared to adhere to the trade deal it reached with Trump in May. But Kyle stressed that the U.S. also needed to “honor the U.K.-U.S. deal” that set duties at 10 percent, according to a Downing Street spokesperson.

Translation: If you want to keep the agreement in place, back off that higher tariff rate.

Days later, Trump’s new tariff went into effect, but at a 10 percent level rather than the higher rate he had declared was “effective immediately.”

The conversation between Greer and Kyle — and the reduced global tariff rate that followed — was just part of the damage control Trump administration officials launched after their Feb. 20 defeat at the Supreme Court, part of an effort to preserve trade pacts forged using tariffs that the court had invalidated.

Politico: What happens to billions in tariff money already paid? Supreme Court leaves refunds unsettled - Ari Hawkins

In striking down a large chunk of President Donald Trump’s tariffs Friday, the Supreme Court set up a new legal battle over the $130 billion-plus the government has collected from those duties.

The justices, in their 6-3 ruling, did not order the Trump administration to provide refunds to importers for the tariffs already paid, or spell out how repayment should work. That likely leaves the U.S. Court of International Trade responsible for sorting out a thicket of legal issues related to possible repayments; under customs law, tariff refund claims are typically handled through that trade-focused, New York-based court and processed by U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

TheHill: Big tech on trial: Google faces a reckoning for anticompetitive ad dominance - Danielle Coffey

Google’s economic dominance, particularly in the advertising space where publishers have suffered falling revenue in recent years, is the direct cause of many of the struggles facing the news media industry. Google claims it is blameless, but over and over, court by court, the company’s theory of innocence has been disproven.

News publishers rely on ad revenue to sustain their businesses, but Google’s monopoly on the digital ad ecosystem has them in a stranglehold. The buying and selling of digital ads works through a series of machines on the buy side (advertisers) and on the sell side (publishers).

Google is the primary owner of this machinery. And a court found last spring, based on mountains of evidence brought by the Department of Justice, that Google abuses its position as a dominant middleman to take massive amounts of revenue from publishers.

The case, which started with an investigation during the first Trump administration, ended with a finding that Google had violated the Sherman Act with anticompetitive conduct. Google’s behavior harmed publishers by reducing their payments from advertisers. Competition was intentionally thwarted, and monopoly fees were charged to each transaction.

Judge Leonie Brinkema, who handed down that guilty verdict, will soon announce remedies. She can change this broken system either by issuing either structural remedies that require Google to sell off different parts of its ad tech, or else behavioral remedies that involve court oversight, to make Google operate in a way that supports a healthy, competitive marketplace.