US tariffs on India: A timeline of duties, deals and reversals

IEEPA is a US law that grants the President broad authority to regulate economic transactions during a declared national emergency; its use as the legal basis for the 2025 "reciprocal tariffs" was the central issue the Supreme Court examined.

In a consolidated ruling on 20 February 2026, the US Supreme Court held by a 6-3 majority that IEEPA does not authorise the President to impose tariffs, invalidating the reciprocal-tariff regime imposed since April 2025.

Key Details

• The consolidated cases were Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump and Trump v. V.O.S. Selections, Inc., with oral arguments heard on 5 November 2025.
• The majority opinion held that IEEPA's general language authorising the President to "regulate" imports does not extend to imposing tariffs — a power the US Constitution assigns primarily to Congress under the Commerce Clause and Import-Export Clause.
• The ruling rendered tariffs imposed under IEEPA since February 2025 (including the reciprocal tariffs applied to India) unlawful, though the administration was permitted to seek alternative statutory authority going forward.
• This is a significant instance of the separation-of-powers principle limiting the scope of a President's economic emergency powers — analogous, in comparative constitutional terms, to Indian courts checking the limits of executive ordinance-making power.

With IEEPA tariffs invalidated, the US administration turned to Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, which allows tariffs only after a structured investigation into specific "unreasonable" or "unjustifiable" foreign trade practices.

Key Details

• Section 301 empowers the US Trade Representative (USTR) to investigate and respond to foreign practices that burden or restrict US commerce, following a defined process: investigation, public comment, consultations, determination, and (if warranted) trade remedies.
• Unlike IEEPA's broad emergency-based tariffs, Section 301 tariffs must be tied to a specific finding — for instance, forced-labour practices or intellectual property concerns — making them narrower but more legally durable.
• The US used Section 301 in 2026 to reimpose a duty on Indian goods, framed around a specific trade-practice finding, distinct from the earlier reciprocal-tariff rationale.
• Historically, Section 301 was used extensively before 1995 and fell into relative disuse once the WTO dispute settlement system emerged, before its revival in recent years as multilateral dispute settlement weakened.

The gap between what a WTO member has legally committed to (bound rates) and what it actually charges (applied rates) is central to understanding how far outside normal trade rules these US actions fall.

Key Details

• WTO members negotiate "bound" tariff rate ceilings in their schedules of commitments, above which they agree not to raise tariffs on fellow members without renegotiation or compensation.
• "Applied" rates are the tariffs actually charged, which can be lower than the bound rate but not exceed it under ordinary WTO rules.
• Emergency or trade-remedy tariffs (whether under IEEPA-style authority or Section 301) that push applied rates far above bound commitments are typically justified by invoking exceptions such as GATT Article XIX (safeguards) or Article XXI (national security), rather than being treated as ordinary tariff revisions.
• India's own average bound tariff rates are considerably higher than its applied rates in most sectors, giving India more legal headroom to raise tariffs defensively than a comparable US move would have if bound normally.