In the long contest between executive ambition and constitutional limits, the American state finds itself in the unusual position of returning $100 billion it once collected with great conviction. The Supreme Court's February ruling — that President Trump had overreached in invoking emergency powers to impose tariffs on more than ninety nations — has set in motion one of the largest refund operations in customs history. Yet the retreat is partial and contested: new tariffs have already taken the place of old ones, and twenty-five states have gone to court to argue that the administration is si