On February 20, 2026, Eastern Eight Zone Time, the United States Supreme Court ruled with a 6 to 3 decision that some tariffs imposed by the Trump administration under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) were illegal, triggering nerves in the global trade and financial markets. The ruling is not the end of the matter, as the Trump camp quickly shifted to seek to reconstruct the tariff framework based on Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974, attempting to pave the way for a new wave of 10% to 15% tariffs. There is no conclusion yet on whether the old tariffs will be refunded and when the new tariffs will take effect; the uncertainty of law and politics has rapidly translated into a game of chance in the market: companies and capital are waiting for judicial proceedings while searching for hedging and safe-haven assets in advance. At the intersection of this “tariff reset” and regulatory reconstruction, a core question is rising: In the new tariff era, how will cross-border capital be reshaped, and will crypto assets become the next stop for capital flight and global allocation?
Supreme Court Stops Old Tariffs: 175...
● The ruling itself not only negated the applicability of IEEPA in this round of tariffs but is also seen as a redrawing of the boundaries of executive power. The Trump administration previously expanded its tariff toolbox against China and other countries under the guise of a national emergency, but the Supreme Court, with a clear advantage of 6 to 3, determined that this practice was illegal, sending a clear signal: even under the narrative of “national security,” trade policy must undergo stricter judicial review, setting a higher threshold for any president to circumvent Congress for tax increases in the future.
● From a fiscal perspective, the tariffs that were ruled illegal contributed about $175 to $200 billion in revenue to the U.S. government in recent years, a not insignificant sum on the budgetary level, but the ruling did not trigger a so-called "automatic refund" mechanism. After the verdict was announced, officials and legal experts repeatedly emphasized that whether to refund the relevant tariffs needs to be incorporated into subsequent judicial procedures for case-by-case consideration; currently, there is neither a unified timetable nor a unified processing path, and funds will not simply be "returned along the same route" in the short term.
● The statement that “refunds need to enter judicial procedures” implies that for companies to reclaim overpaid tariffs may require years of litigation and high legal costs, during which political cycles and economic environments may undergo tremendous changes. Since the court did not specify concrete rules, corporate legal teams find it difficult to assess their chances of success and estimate time costs, transforming the tariff issue from a clear fiscal topic into a long-term and uncertain legal tug-of-war, where the unresolved expectations themselves constitute a market risk premium.
● Predictive market platforms indicate that the current probability offered by the market for “tariff refund” is only about 19%, a ratio that reflects collective expectations quantitatively: legal victories do not necessarily translate into cash inflows. The executive branch can weaken the immediate impact of the ruling on fiscal and trade structures through procedural delays, selective settlements, and other means; the coming years are likely to be a process of repeated games between executive power and judicial review over tariff authority, forcing companies and investors to rearrange their global supply chains and asset layouts amid this long-term tug-of-war.
Trump Shifts to New Tariffs: Section 122...
● After the Supreme Court blocked the IEEPA route, Trump and his team quickly turned their attention to Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974, attempting to build a legal basis for a new round of 10% to 15% general tariffs through this traditional trade tool. Unlike previous fine-tuned operations targeting specific countries and products, Section 122 provides a framework closer to "benchmark tariff adjustments," which, once activated, will impose a uniform additional tax on a wide range of imported goods, aiming to reshape the bargaining chips in trade negotiations and domestic political narratives through a “full coverage” style of tariff increase.
● From a structural perspective, Section 122 differs crucially from IEEPA: IEEPA is wrapped in the "emergency economic power" framework and relies more on the president's subjective determination of national security threats, whereas Section 122 is embedded in traditional trade law, leaning towards economic and trade considerations in form. This may make it appear “more defensible” in court and also means Congress and interest groups have more room to intervene in procedures; the new tariffs surrounding Section 122 are likely to encounter multiple legal and political challenges from legislative bodies, industry associations, and allied countries in the future.
● Currently, the specific tax rates, applicable categories, and effective timelines of the new tariffs remain unconfirmed, and there is no clear roadmap for the potential judicial battles over the tariffs under Section 122, making it difficult for the market to price the real probability and timing of this policy’s implementation. For companies, tariffs are no longer merely a cost issue; they also encompass a distribution of uncertainties that includes “tail risks”: any lawsuit ruling, congressional vote, or executive order could change the course of tariffs in a short time, and this unresolved status will continuously drive up risk premiums and hedging demands.
● In such an uncertain environment, multinational enterprises and high-net-worth individuals often take proactive measures by migrating assets, creating offshore structures, and holding diversified currency assets to build a "firewall." When traditional financial channels are constrained by capital regulations and compliance reviews, cross-border, self-custody, and highly liquid crypto assets naturally become an important part of the asset hedging checklist. Whether through currency exchange flows from onshore income to overseas or utilizing on-chain tools to achieve diversified asset allocation across multiple countries, the “new tariff-judicial battle” combination objectively raises the intrinsic demand for on-chain assets as hedging tools.
Cross-Border Anxiety Intensifies: From Goods Tariffs...
● As the U.S. reconstructs its tariff framework, global regulation on RWA (Real-World Assets on Chain) is also tightening. China's Document 42 proposes the mindset of “prohibition domestically, strict control abroad,” effectively bridging on-chain assets with traditional cross-border capital management frameworks: on one hand, it strictly controls related tokens and RWA businesses domestically, while on the other hand, it extends regulatory reach beyond borders by pressuring overseas participant institutions, making any attempts to bypass capital controls using on-chain assets face compliance and criminal risks.
● In contrast, Hong Kong retains relatively lenient space for RWA products under its current statements, providing a realistic path for certain funds to “circumvent and go offshore”: funds can first enter compliant intermediaries and then complete the conversion “from domestic cash to on-chain equity” through issuing or subscribing to RWA-type products in Hong Kong. Although this channel is also in a period of policy observation, in the context of regulatory divergence across regions, such “regulatory gaps” will naturally become a key area of exploration for cross-border funds.
● When high tariffs and fragmented regulations overlap, companies and individuals will increasingly consider using on-chain tools in cross-border settlement and asset allocation. On the one hand, in supply chain settlement, using crypto assets for pricing or as an intermediary can to some extent avoid the risks of single fiat currency exchange rates and sanctions; on the other hand, some entities may utilize decentralized finance protocols for global liquidity management and financing, reducing reliance on single country financial systems. Although these behaviors may not be mainstream, the marginal increase in demand will manifest in data as an uptick in cross-border public chain address activity and cross-border transfer volumes.
● In this context, the crypto market is gradually forming a compound narrative of “trade hedging + regulatory arbitrage”: on one hand, on-chain assets are regarded as alternative tools for hedging trade wars and currency wars; on the other hand, institutions and individuals will consciously seek regulatory differences across multiple legal domains, arranging RWA, cross-border stable assets, and on-chain structures under a compliant guise. In terms of track levels, cross-border public chains, platforms focused on compliant RWA issuance, and on-chain settlement networks that connect with traditional finance are likely to gain higher attention and valuation premiums amid future policy fluctuations.
Predictive Markets Emerge: 19% Refund...
● In the context of rising macro and legal uncertainties, on-chain predictive markets have become an important supplement for price discovery and risk management. Platforms represented by Polymarket have created markets around judicial and political events such as “will the old tariffs be refunded” and “when will new tariffs take effect,” allowing users to bet on future scenarios by buying or selling certificates for different outcomes. Prices here reflect not only the participants' risk appetite but also provide real-time adjustments to traditional polls and expert forecasts.
● The current market probability of “tariff refunds being around 19%” conveys two levels of consensus: first, the Supreme Court ruling does not necessarily lead to capital inflow, and the executive branch still holds a lot of operational leeway; second, even if some companies eventually recover tariffs through litigation, it is likely to be a long and dispersed process, making it difficult to form a concentrated positive impact on market liquidity. In other words, while the macro narrative is strong, the “good news realization” at the level of funds is significantly discounted.
● For crypto traders, on-chain predictive markets offer new hedging and speculation tools: they can build “event-driven” positions around upcoming rulings, hearings, or election nodes, transforming difficult-to-quantify policy risks into manageable price risks by hedging between predictive markets and spot/derivatives. For information-sensitive participants, such markets also provide arbitrage opportunities to capture the lag in the "news-price" transmission, thereby increasing the overall crypto ecosystem's sensitivity to macro events.
● As judicial procedures advance, any key node—such as the acceptance of an appeal, a temporary injunction from a judge, or news of an administrative settlement—could trigger significant volatility in predictive markets and diffuse through arbitrage and emotional contagion to mainstream crypto assets. Leading cryptocurrencies and high liquidity public chains often serve as the first carriers to react to macro sentiments, and behind these fluctuations lies a process of the market constantly re-evaluating the future paths of the “trade war-judicial battle-currency war” chain, directly reflecting traditional geopolitical risks onto on-chain asset prices.
Undercurrents on-Chain: Buyback Frenzy and...
● As macro-level tariff disputes fill the headlines, the on-chain world is playing out its own "micro script." Taking the Solana ecosystem's Pump.fun as an example, the platform has recently completed buybacks totaling over $300 million of PUMP tokens, achieving a 25.383% single-day reduction in circulation on one trading day. Against the backdrop of overwhelming macro uncertainty, similar high-intensity buyback behavior has created localized “bull market islands,” attracting substantial short-term liquidity and creating an emotional climax disconnected from traditional markets.
● For platforms, large-scale buybacks serve both as price support tools and narrative means to shape a "growth story." When investors find it difficult to price the macro environment, any observable and quantifiable supply reduction will be rapidly amplified and become the target of fund chasing. In the short term, liquidity will tend to flow toward these “story-driven” and “actionable” assets, even if their fundamentals have not fundamentally changed, which to some extent exacerbates the disconnection between the crypto market and the macro front, while also amplifying systemic tail risks during localized bubble bursts.
● Alongside local prosperity, there is a steep rise in on-chain security risks. Data shows that in February 2026, losses from crypto-related scams have surged to approximately $370 million, hitting an 11-month high, indicating that while new funds are entering the market at an accelerating pace, malicious actors are also rapidly upgrading their tools and tactics. The more funds are eager to chase high volatility and high returns stories, the more likely they are to fall into refined scams such as KOL-led trades, disguised airdrops, and fraudulent project white papers, making security costs an implicit “tariff” for participating in the crypto market.
● On the specific event front, IoTeX confirmed in an official report that it suffered about $2 million in a hacker attack; even though the losses were said to be "controlled," it still exposed potential shortcomings in project-level permission management and contract auditing. Meanwhile, phishing ads impersonating Uniswap were placed on social platforms, luring users to access fake interfaces and sign malicious transactions, resulting in substantial asset losses. These cases point to a fact: in the absence of a complete regulatory loop, structural security gaps exist in the on-chain ecosystem, and the flood of macro funds and retail sentiments often tends to be "digested" by these gaps first, rather than being entirely consolidated into healthy long-term capital.
Trade War not Ceasing: The Crypto Market Will...
In summary, the Supreme Court's negation of IEEPA tariffs, Trump's attempt to restart tariffs through Section 122, and the tightening of regulations around RWA in various legal jurisdictions are collectively reshaping the medium- and long-term trajectories of cross-border capital and crypto assets. On one hand, rising uncertainties in traditional trade and capital channels provide a structural demand foundation for crypto assets as a “trade hedge-asset migration”; on the other hand, elongated judicial procedures and repetitive policy expectations ensure that this path is destined to be accompanied by high volatility and high policy sensitivity, where sudden tightening of any link could cause reverse squeezes on on-chain asset valuations.
In terms of track dimensions, predictive markets that price macro and policy events, RWA platforms reflecting real assets, and high-performance public chains with global liquidity are likely to gain a relatively advantageous position in this round of major country geopolitical confrontation and regulatory reconstruction. However, accompanying this are amplified effects on security and compliance: public chain ecosystems lacking effective risk control and regulatory frameworks are more likely to magnify systemic event risks during rapid capital inflows and outflows; hacker attacks, internal governance failures, and regulatory compliance shocks could all trigger chain reactions after single-point eruptions.
For ordinary participants, it is essential to closely track three main variable threads going forward: first, the pace of new tariff policy implementation and its feedback at congressional and international levels; second, the progress of judicial challenges concerning IEEPA and Section 122, especially key rulings and settlement points; third, the regulatory response intensity and direction of various countries as they face accelerated cross-border flows of on-chain capital, including KYC/AML requirements, RWA licensing, and cross-border payment regulatory frameworks. Operationally, one should be cautious of short-term speculative bubbles riding the flag of “macro narratives” and “national strategies,” avoiding high-level buys in localized bull market islands; at the same time, by using compliant exchanges, licensed custodians, and multilayer security tools (hardware wallets, multi-signature, permission stratification, etc.) to build one’s defense line, it is crucial to compress uncontrollable policy and security risks as much as possible within manageable boundaries.
Join our community to discuss and get stronger together!
Official Telegram community: https://t.me/aicoincn
AiCoin Chinese Twitter: https://x.com/AiCoinzh
OKX Welfare Group: https://aicoin.com/link/chat?cid=l61eM4owQ
Binance Welfare Group: https://aicoin.com/link/chat?cid=ynr7d1P6Z
免责声明：本文章仅代表作者个人观点，不代表本平台的立场和观点。本文章仅供信息分享，不构成对任何人的任何投资建议。用户与作者之间的任何争议，与本平台无关。如网页中刊载的文章或图片涉及侵权，请提供相关的权利证明和身份证明发送邮件到support@aicoin.com，本平台相关工作人员将会进行核查。
