Financial Associated Press, February 21 (Editor Zhao Hao) On Friday (February 20), the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Trump’s tariff policy was illegal, causing U.S. stocks to open lower and move higher, with the three major indexes collectively closing higher.
As of the close, the Dow Jones Index rose 0.47% to 49,625.97 points; the S&P 500 Index rose 0.69% to 6,909.51 points; the Nasdaq Composite Index rose 0.9% to 22,886.07 points.
On the same day, the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the lower court's ruling in a 6-3 decision, finding that U.S. President Trump exceeded his legal authority by invoking the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to implement tariff policies.
While Wall Street had widely expected the Supreme Court to rule against the Trump administration, some issues remain unresolved, such as whether and how tariffs already imposed will be refunded, an issue that may need to be further decided by lower courts.
Michael Brenner, senior research analyst at FBB Capital Partners, said: "The lower courts will have to figure out those who paid the tariffs and the consequences of the government paying huge refunds. If this happens, it will actually amount to an economic stimulus measure."
At a subsequent press conference, Trump stated that he would sign an order to impose an additional 10% tariff on global goods exported to the United States in accordance with Section 122 of the U.S. Trade Act of 1974 on top of the conventional tariffs already levied.
"With the specific details of the upcoming executive order unclear, the market is uncertain about how to respond. We will not revise our outlook for the U.S. economy as we expect tariffs to remain in place through other channels," TD Securities strategists said.
Before the market opened, preliminary data released by the U.S. Department of Commerce showed that the U.S. economic growth rate in the fourth quarter of 2025 was 1.4%, significantly lower than market expectations of 2.8%; the full-year growth rate was 2.2%, the lowest level since 2021.
The U.S. Commerce Department said the record-breaking federal government shutdown was the main reason for the slowdown in economic growth in the fourth quarter. The department estimated that the shutdown reduced economic growth by about 1 percentage point in the quarter.
The data also shows that Americans are still keen to spend even if their financial situation is under pressure. "It's just incredible," said Tara Sinclair, chair of the economics department at George Washington University. "We know that people are not optimistic about the economy, but it doesn't really cause them to consume less."
Earlier in the day, Iranian Foreign Minister Araghchi said that Iran and the United States "had very good negotiations" in Geneva this week. Araghchi also mentioned that Iran decided to prepare a draft of a possible agreement for discussion at the next negotiation.
Popular stock performance
Most large technology stocks rose. (Arranged by market value) Nvidia rose 1.02%, Apple rose 1.54%, Google C rose 3.74%, Microsoft fell 0.31%, Amazon rose 2.56%, Meta rose 1.69%, and Tesla rose 0.03%.
The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index rose 1.07%, with 21 of the 30 constituent stocks rising. Coherent rose 6.75% and Lam Group rose 3.17%. Credo Technology fell 5.05%, Astera Labs fell 2.22%, and AMD fell 1.58%.
Storage concept stocks overall strengthened, with SanDisk rising 4.65% and Micron Technology rising 2.59%.
Many network security stocks plummeted, with Cloudflare falling 8.05% and CrowdStrike falling 7.95%. Earlier in the day, Anthropic added the Claude Code Security feature to its chatbot, which can be used to find code vulnerabilities.
In terms of Chinese concept stocks, Livermore's leading index of Chinese concept stocks closed up 0.93%, and the Nasdaq China Golden Dragon Index fell 0.05%.
Popular Chinese concept stocks had mixed gains and losses, with Pinduoduo up 2.93%, NIO up 2.84%, Futu Holdings up 1.22%; Bilibili down 2.13%, BawangChaji down 1.99%, Baidu down 0.91%, and Xpeng Motors down 0.73%.
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