Congress hands the White House authority to impose duties of up to 100 percent on the largest buyers of Russian crude and gas, opening a new front in US trade policy just as importers were adjusting to a year of statutory upheaval.
WASHINGTON, Sept. 17, 2026
The House of Representatives voted 262 to 159 on Wednesday to send the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026 to President Donald Trump’s desk, clearing the last legislative hurdle for a measure that does something no other sanctions package of the past decade has done. It writes a brand new tariff authority into federal law.
The bill is framed in Washington as a Russia policy instrument, and its sponsors have consistently sold it that way. For the trade bar, for customs brokers and for the compliance teams inside American importers and exporters, it is something else entirely. It is the first significant grant of fresh tariff-setting power to the executive branch since the Supreme Court curtailed the use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act in February, and it arrives with a 30-day clock attached.
Under the terms of the legislation, the President is directed to raise duties on goods from the Russian Federation to a rate of up to 500 percent ad valorem within 30 days of enactment, and to raise duties on goods from a defined and limited set of other countries to a rate of up to 100 percent ad valorem over the same period. The Congressional Research Service, in a legal analysis published on Sept. 3, described the two mechanisms as primary tariffs and secondary tariffs respectively, and flagged a series of interpretive questions that the statute leaves unanswered.
The Senate had already passed the measure on Aug. 7 by a margin of 86 to 11 after more than a year of negotiation. The House vote came on the final day the lower chamber was in session before members left Washington until after Election Day, and it split both parties. Fifty-eight Democrats voted in favor. Seven Republicans voted against.
Trump has said he will sign it.
What the statute actually authorizes
The tariff architecture sits in three sections of the bill, and the distinctions among them matter a great deal for anyone trying to model exposure.
Section 112 addresses imports from Russia. It states that no later than 30 days after enactment the President shall increase the rate of duty for all goods, including oil, natural gas, liquefied natural gas, petroleum, petroleum products, petrochemical products, coal and coal products originating in the Russian Federation, to a rate of up to 500 percent ad valorem. The provision sets no floor. It specifies only a ceiling. The duty is expressly additive, stacking on top of any other rate already applicable to those goods.
In practical terms the primary tariff is largely symbolic. The Ending Importation of Russian Oil Act, enacted in April 2022, already bars US importation of Russian oil and related energy products, and the new legislation does not repeal it. CRS noted the overlap directly, observing that several of the products named in Section 112 cannot lawfully enter the United States at all, so a tariff on them changes nothing operationally. The residual trade in non-energy Russian goods is small, though not zero, and importers of Russian-origin fertilizers, metals and chemicals will want to review their entries closely.
Section 113 is where the commercial consequence lies. It directs the President, again within 30 days of enactment, to increase the rate of duty on all goods imported into the United States from countries described in subsection (c) to a rate of up to 100 percent ad valorem. Subsection (c) creates two independent triggers.
The first trigger captures a country that knowingly made new purchases of Russian-origin crude oil or natural gas on or after the 30th day following enactment and that was among the five largest importers, by total volume, of Russian-origin crude oil or natural gas during the most recent 12-month period preceding enactment. There is a carve-out for natural gas. A country escapes the gas-based trigger if its Russian gas imports over the relevant 12 months were less than 15 percent of total Russian gas exports during that period and if it has taken significant steps to reduce those imports. The bill does not define significant steps.
The second trigger captures a country that was among the top five countries facilitating Russian oil sanctions evasion during the same 12-month lookback. The statute defines facilitation by reference to foreign persons located, operating or organized in that country who knowingly engage in transactions, activities or services that circumvent Russian oil sanctions, including conduct involving shadow fleet vessels. Crucially, that definition reaches private conduct. No governmental participation is required. CRS observed that the bill offers no quantitative yardstick for identifying the top five facilitators, which appears to leave the determination to executive judgment.
A rule of construction in Section 113(h) states that nothing in the act authorizes duties on goods from any country not expressly described in subsection (c) or from Russia. That is the guardrail. Whether it holds will depend on how the executive branch reads the triggers, and several House Democrats argued this week that it will not hold at all.
Who is in the frame
China and India are the largest buyers of Russian crude oil, according to the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, the think tank whose monthly export tracking is widely used by sanctions analysts. Reporting in New Delhi on Wednesday and Thursday identified India, China, Slovakia, Hungary and Azerbaijan as the major purchasers most directly exposed to the secondary tariff provisions.
The natural gas picture is different from the oil picture. Europe was historically Russia’s largest gas customer, though the European Union has cut its purchases sharply since 2022, and sales to China have grown. The 15 percent threshold in Section 113(d) appears designed to spare European buyers who have been unwinding their positions, though the undefined significant steps standard leaves room for argument in both directions.
CRS raised a separate question about whether the European Union could be treated as a country for purposes of the statute at all. The agency noted that the United States Trade Representative has previously investigated and acted against the EU as a unit under Section 301, but also pointed out that the Sanctioning Act caps the number of countries subject to tariffs, which arguably precludes treating a 27-member political union as a single target.
The vote and the argument
House Speaker Mike Johnson framed the outcome as a demonstration of resolve. “This bill sends a powerful message of American unity and gives the administration every tool in the toolbox to help bring this war to a just end, and we are proud to send it to the president’s desk,” Johnson said in a statement after passage.
Representative Michael McCaul, the Texas Republican who managed much of the floor argument, made the case for tariffs as the enforcement teeth of a sanctions regime that has repeatedly been evaded. “As we’ve heard from President Zelenskyy’s team, you can evade sanctions, which the Russians have done for years, but you cannot evade tariffs,” McCaul said on the House floor. “Tariffs are a powerful way to amplify the impact of sanctions. That’s why they are the teeth of this bill.”
Earlier in the debate McCaul put the moral case more plainly. “This is a moral issue that requires moral courage,” he said. “I want us to be able to say that we did everything possible to end this war. That we understood the threat. That we had the courage to do what was right, to cripple the Russian war machine and turn the tide toward peace.”
The opposition, notably, was not primarily about Russia. It was about tariffs.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Democratic Whip Katherine Clark and Democratic Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar issued a joint statement explaining their no votes. They argued that the President “has shown no willingness to be strong on Russia” and added that “he cannot be entrusted with new powers to impose tariffs that will further raise costs for American families.”
Representative Don Beyer of Virginia put the drafting concern in sharper terms during debate. “This bill has a loophole that would allow him to define basically any country as a facilitator of evading Russian sanctions,” Beyer said. “He could then hit them with tariffs of up to 100 percent, with no guardrails or oversight, and no expiration.”
Beyer, together with Representatives Gregory Meeks of New York and Richard Neal of Massachusetts, had warned in a statement the previous Friday that the bill would “dramatically extend presidential tariff authorities” and that “these flaws would raise Americans’ prices while undermining support for Ukraine in the long term.” They argued the President already possessed ample sanctions authority to target the same entities without a new tariff delegation.
Meeks struck a more conciliatory note after the vote, saying he hoped Trump would prove him wrong and implement the bill as intended. “But, in the likely event he doesn’t, I will do everything in my power to make sure Congress holds him to account, the American people do not get further crushed by his inflationary tariffs, and that Ukraine receives real support,” he said.
Two moderate Democrats broke ranks on Tuesday to help the bill clear a procedural vote that had wobbled when a small group of conservatives withheld support. Representative Jared Golden of Maine, who is retiring, said the stakes justified the defection. “This is our last week in session until November. The stakes for Ukraine are too high to let this good bill, which already passed the Senate with overwhelming, bipartisan support, die as a result of a procedural vote,” Golden said. Representative Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington, who holds a competitive seat with a Ukrainian constituency, said simply that she would “always stand with my community’s values.”
The legislation carries the name of the late Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who spent more than a year negotiating it and who died suddenly in July, shortly after returning from Kyiv and announcing that a deal had been reached with the White House on an updated text. His death gave the effort fresh momentum.
Senator Richard Blumenthal, the Connecticut Democrat who co-authored the measure, has been among the most pointed critics of Indian and Chinese purchases of Russian barrels. “China and India to you. You better clean up your act. Buy your oil and gas somewhere else. Appeasement is not a strategy,” Blumenthal has said.
Skepticism runs in the other direction as well. Michael McFaul, who served as US ambassador to Russia during the Obama administration, wrote on X that he has “no illusions that Trump will actually use the authorities in the legislature to impose crippling sanctions on Russia. He won’t.” That view is informed by the administration’s parallel diplomatic track. US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner have traveled to Moscow and Kyiv this month, CIA Director John Ratcliffe made a quiet visit to Moscow in August, and Washington has invited Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov to a G20 ministerial meeting in the United States.
The legal machinery importers should understand
Three features of the statute deserve attention from anyone who will have to live with it.
The first is the division of labor between the President and the United States Trade Representative. Section 113(a) charges the President with imposing the secondary tariffs in the first instance. Sections 113(b) and 113(e) charge USTR with subsequent modifications, including a requirement that USTR, in consultation with the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Energy, redetermine every 180 days which countries are the five largest importers of Russian crude and the five largest importers of Russian gas, and impose duties accordingly.
That split has real litigation consequences. Courts have held that USTR tariff actions are reviewable under the Administrative Procedure Act standard, which asks whether an agency action is arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion or otherwise not in accordance with law. Presidential actions are not subject to the APA and have historically drawn a far more deferential standard, limited to whether the action reflects a clear misconstruction of the governing statute, a significant procedural violation or action outside delegated authority. CRS concluded that the President’s initial imposition would likely face less searching review than USTR’s later adjustments. For importers weighing whether to preserve refund rights through protest or litigation, that asymmetry is a planning input, not an abstraction.
The second feature is the notice requirement. Section 113(g) obliges the President or USTR to submit a written justification to several congressional committees no later than 10 days before imposing or modifying secondary tariffs, setting out a substantive rationale for the rate chosen and detailing the methodology used to determine that a country is subject to the duty. There is no equivalent reporting requirement for the primary tariffs on Russia. That 10-day window is the only advance warning the statute builds in, and it is directed at Congress rather than at the public, though committee filings tend to surface quickly.
The third feature is the exit. Section 115 permits the President to waive duties upon certifying in writing to Congress that the waiver is in the national interest and submitting a report explaining the basis for that certification, which may include a classified annex. Section 117 permits termination of primary tariffs upon certification that Russia has signed a peace agreement accepted by the Government of Ukraine and ceased hostilities, and termination of secondary tariffs upon certification that the relevant country or person is no longer engaged in the triggering activity and has given reliable assurances it will not resume. Terminations are subject to a 30-day congressional review window during which a joint resolution of disapproval may be enacted. The act as a whole sunsets five years after enactment, except for a provision extending the Iran Sanctions Act of 1996.
At Trump’s request, the bill also extends sanctions on Iran’s energy and weapons sectors.
Economic impact
The macroeconomic stakes are set by where the exposed countries sit in US import flows.
US goods imports from India totaled 103.8 billion dollars in 2025, an increase of 18.9 percent over 2024, and the US goods trade deficit with India reached 58.4 billion dollars, up 27.8 percent year over year. A 100 percent duty applied across that base would be, in arithmetic terms, one of the largest single-country tariff actions in modern American history, and it would land on categories where substitution is slow: pharmaceuticals and their ingredients, gems and jewelry, textiles and apparel, machinery, and a growing volume of electronics.
China’s position is larger still, and Chinese goods already carry layered Section 301 and Section 232 duties. Slovakia, Hungary and Azerbaijan are comparatively small US suppliers, but Hungary and Slovakia are EU member states, which raises the unresolved question CRS identified about whether and how the statute can reach a member of a customs union without reaching the union itself.
The energy backdrop has turned sharply unfavorable. Crude has moved past 108 to 109 dollars a barrel as the conflict in West Asia has disrupted shipping through the Strait of Hormuz and energy infrastructure in Saudi Arabia has come under attack. Russia accounted for 65.9 percent of India’s oil imports last month even as those imports fell 24 percent from the previous month, with Russian refineries under Ukrainian attack. India has been diversifying, raising purchases from Venezuela among other suppliers.
That combination matters for American buyers of Indian goods in a way that is easy to miss. If Indian refiners lose discounted Russian barrels, Indian input costs rise, and those costs migrate into the landed price of Indian exports regardless of whether a tariff is ever imposed.
“We have both advantages of predictable supply of oil, and Russia gives up a preferred discount to market rate. Any amount of US tariff will have an impact, but more importantly, predictability will go,” said Rishi Sahai, managing director at Cogence Advisors, an investment bank. “There are two to three components to oil imports: transportation, insurance and cost of oil. All these components will go up. One has to see what happens.”
What importers and exporters should do now
The 30-day clock begins at enactment, not at signature announcement, and the practical planning horizon is therefore short.
Importers sourcing from any of the likely target countries should begin by mapping exposure at the ten-digit tariff line rather than at the country level. The statute authorizes duties on all goods from a covered country, which suggests a broad application, but every recent tariff action of comparable scope has arrived with annexes of exclusions, and the shape of those annexes will determine who actually pays. Nothing in the bill requires exclusions, and nothing prohibits them.
Second, review in-transit and warehouse positions. Recent US tariff proclamations have been inconsistent about in-transit relief, and several this year have offered none at all, leaving goods already on the water exposed to rates that did not exist when they shipped. Importers with foreign trade zone inventory should confirm admission status now, because privileged foreign status elections made after an effective date generally cannot be used to escape a new duty.
Third, revisit contract terms. Incoterms allocation, duty escalation clauses, force majeure language and price adjustment mechanisms that were drafted before 2025 are frequently silent on a 100 percent ad valorem shock. Buyers and sellers who have not renegotiated since the Supreme Court’s February ruling on IEEPA are working from assumptions that no longer hold.
Fourth, treat classification and origin discipline as a first-order risk. Secondary tariffs of this magnitude create powerful incentives for transshipment and origin misdescription, and US Customs and Border Protection has been aggressive on both. Importers who rely on suppliers’ origin representations without substantiation are accepting an enforcement exposure that scales with the duty rate.
Finally, watch the 10-day congressional notice. It is the only structured early warning in the statute, and it will be the first public indication of which countries are in scope and at what rate.
For US exporters the calculus is different but not gentler. Retaliation has been the consistent response to unilateral US action this year, and the countries most exposed here are significant buyers of American agricultural commodities, aircraft and energy. India’s Ministry of External Affairs said this week that the Indian side “has also made clear its determination to take all necessary measures to protect its trade and economic interests.” American farm exporters in particular have spent 2026 absorbing the consequences of that pattern.
The larger shift
Step back from the Ukraine framing and the significance of Wednesday’s vote is structural. For most of the past two years the fight over American tariff policy has been a fight about how far existing statutes stretch. The Supreme Court answered part of that question in February when it held that IEEPA does not authorize tariffs of indefinite scope. The Court of International Trade answered another part in May when it invalidated the Section 122 surcharge, a ruling now on appeal. Section 232, Section 301 and Section 338 have carried the load since.
Congress has now done something different. Rather than constrain the delegation, it has added to it, and it has done so in a bill that a majority of the minority party opposed precisely on that ground. Whatever happens in Ukraine, that precedent will outlast the conflict. The act sunsets in five years. The question of who sets American tariffs will not.