Friday's Supreme Court tariff ruling triggered immediate market celebration. Auto investors and analysts predicted pricing relief. But Wired's analysis cuts through the narrative. Tariffs will partially remain while the structural forces driving car prices—manufacturer consolidation, constrained supply, elastic demand—persist unchanged. This is the moment the market's oversimplified policy-equals-pricing assumption collides with economic reality.

The market read the Supreme Court's tariff ruling as an unambiguous win for auto consumers. Prices up because of tariffs. Tariffs reduced. Prices fall. The logic felt airtight enough that investors immediately priced in automotive relief. Then Aarian Marshall's analysis arrived 24 hours later with a different story.

The tariff ruling doesn't eliminate the tariffs harming automakers. Many remain intact. But that's not even the inflection point Marshall identifies. The deeper misread is this: markets assumed tariffs were the binding constraint on car prices. They're not. Structural automotive economics are.

Consider the actual price dynamics. Car prices have remained historically elevated despite years of post-pandemic supply normalization. Production has recovered. Chip shortages have eased. Yet vehicles that cost $28,000 in 2019 still command $35,000 today. Tariffs explain some of that. But they don't explain all of it. Manufacturer consolidation does. Pricing power does. The fact that buyers still line up despite sticker shock does.

When Ford or GM prices a vehicle, they're not optimizing for consumer welfare. They're optimizing for margin. Cheaper inputs—lower tariffs, recovered supply chains—create an opportunity to improve margins, not necessarily to cut prices. This is automotive industry 101, yet it's precisely what the market optimism narrative glossed over.

There's historical precedent. When semiconductor supply recovered in 2023-2024, did automakers pass all savings to consumers? No. They pocketed margin improvements while prices remained sticky. Why would tariff relief be different? The structural incentives haven't changed. Demand remains robust enough—credit financing is available, used car prices provide reference points—that manufacturers have little pressure to compete on price rather than margins.

For enterprise buyers making supply chain decisions, this distinction matters immediately. Companies that built 2026 budgets assuming 10-15% automotive cost relief from tariff policy should recalibrate. The real price trajectory depends on whether supply constraints tighten again, whether demand elasticity finally breaks, whether competitive pressure from Chinese EV manufacturers forces price competition that regulatory relief alone won't trigger. None of those are guaranteed by Friday's ruling.

Investors face a similar correction. Equity analysts who flagged tariffs as the primary headwind on auto retail spending now need to reassess. If tariffs were never the binding constraint, then tariff relief doesn't unlock the pricing normalization they predicted. Automotive stocks rallied on the ruling. That rally assumes consumer spending on vehicles will accelerate when prices normalize. But if prices don't normalize meaningfully—because manufacturers prioritize margins over market share—then the demand case weakens.

The timing is crucial. Markets had 24 hours to celebrate before Marshall's structural analysis reframed the narrative. That's the narrow window where policy changes feel like inflection points. Then reality disciplines expectations. In automotive, that reality is that supply, demand, and competitive structure matter more than tariff policy. The ruling changed the policy environment. It didn't change the incentives that matter.

The Supreme Court's tariff ruling is a real policy victory, but it solves a secondary problem in automotive pricing. The primary constraints—manufacturer consolidation, pricing power dynamics, constrained competitive pressure—persist unchanged. For investors, this requires an immediate reframing: tariff relief improves industry fundamentals but doesn't drive the price normalization markets assumed. For decision-makers, supply chain budgets should plan for sticky prices rather than tariff-driven relief. For professionals, this reinforces that policy changes matter less than structural incentives. The window for correcting expectations closes quickly; those tracking automotive supply chains and automotive equity should recalibrate forecasts now, before earnings calls in Q1 2026 reveal whether manufacturers actually compete on price or simply expand margins.