For over a year, Big Tech quietly absorbed one of the most disruptive cost pressures in recent memory: import tariffs that snaked through every layer of its supply chain.
On Friday, the US Supreme Court pulled the plug.
In a 6-3 ruling, Chief Justice John Roberts declared that President Trump’s sweeping tariffs, imposed using emergency economic powers as unconstitutional.
Markets didn’t wait for analysis. They reacted instantly, and tech led the charge.
Alphabet jumped 4%, Meta and Amazon each gained 2%, SanDisk climbed 2.5%, Micron added 1.5%, and Nvidia ticked up 1%.
The S&P 500 rose 0.7% on the day.
How tariffs were quietly bleeding tech
To understand the rally, you first need to understand the damage.
Tech companies don’t make products in one place.
A chip might be designed in California, fabricated in Taiwan, packaged in Malaysia, and assembled into a device in China before being shipped to a consumer in Ohio.
Tariffs (import taxes on goods crossing borders) were hitting this chain at multiple points, driving up costs that companies either absorbed or passed on to customers.
The tariffs struck down today were imposed under a 1977 law called IEEPA, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which was meant for genuine national emergencies, not broad trade policy.
Over 2025, they generated $142 billion in revenue for the US government. That money came directly from importers, and much of it came from the tech sector.
For memory chip makers like Micron and SanDisk, the relief is immediate and tangible.
Their supply chains span South Korea, Japan, and China; every border crossing had a tariff attached.
For hyperscalers like Google and Amazon, who spend billions annually on data centre hardware, cheaper components mean better margins and faster expansion.
Breakout or one-day exhale?
Not every gain tells the same story, and that’s where it gets interesting.
Google’s 4% surge is the standout. The company imports enormous volumes of server hardware and networking equipment, and shedding tariff costs on that procurement is a direct margin win.
Meta and Amazon follow similar logic: less friction in hardware procurement, lower input costs, better numbers ahead.
Nvidia’s modest 1% move, however, tells a more complicated story.
The Supreme Court’s ruling lifts IEEPA tariffs, but it does nothing about US chip export restrictions to China, which remain firmly in place.
Nvidia has excluded China from its near-term revenue guidance, and that won’t change today. The market knows this, which is why Nvidia’s celebration is measured.
The ruling also cuts the effective tariff rate on Chinese imports by nearly two-thirds, a seismic shift for companies with deep China supply chain exposure.
One caveat hangs over everything: the Trump administration could attempt to reroute tariff policy through Congress or alternative legal authorities.
Legal experts say that the path is slower and harder.
But for now, the market has made its call. Tech has been pricing in trade-war risk for over a year and today, it started pricing it out.
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