Days before trade penalties and energy-purchase restrictions tied to a recently enacted law were set to activate, President Trump chose not to enforce them, setting aside provisions covering tariffs on Russian goods alongside measures targeting buyers of the country's oil and gas. The executive order issued on Friday stated that granting the waiver was consistent with the national interest.
Designed to apply financial and diplomatic pressure on Russia over its 2022 military offensive into Ukraine, the legislation sets out a framework of escalating consequences. Ties between Trump and Moscow have drawn closer over recent months, while his remarks about Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy have sharpened in tone — including comments that observers noted raised the possibility of a change in Kyiv's leadership.
Analyst assessments point to the newly announced measures as a factor that may lift oil prices at a time when living costs are already elevated — a backdrop complicated by the approaching midterm elections, where control of both congressional chambers remains in play for Republicans.
The legislation — spearheaded in Congress by Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who has since passed away — would have imposed tariffs of up to 100 per cent on goods entering the United States from any country ranking among the five largest purchasers of Russian crude oil or natural gas, a category that encompassed both India and China, with those penalties taking effect within a 30-day period. Nations that purchased Russian oil or gas within 30 days of the legislation taking effect, along with any of the five countries most actively helping Russia sidestep the restrictions, fell within the law's reach.
The waiver, per the order's language, stays active until the president or designated senior officials conclude that additional steps are warranted — a determination left entirely to their discretion. The Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026, which Trump had put his signature to in mid-September, provided the legislative backdrop. In a statement accompanying the order, Trump indicated he had forwarded to Congress a certification that granting the waiver at that point served the national interests of the United States.
Two of the heaviest purchasers of Russian oil — China and India — voiced objections to the proposed sanctions legislation targeting Moscow. China's foreign ministry expressed opposition to the use of extraterritorial legal jurisdiction it considers unsupported by international law, while officials in New Delhi conveyed to the United States that the proposed tariff measures carried potential consequences for the relationship between the two countries.
The law provides that once the president formally notifies Congress that penalties conflict with national interests, those measures can be lifted.
Virginia Democrat Don Beyer, who serves in the House of Representatives, took aim at the waiver in a written statement, arguing that the decision amounted to deference toward Russian President Vladimir Putin and that it ran counter to what Congress had intended when it passed legislation aimed at holding Russia accountable for its military actions in Ukraine.
A fuel-supply arrangement between the United States and Russia — under which sanctions on Russian exports would be lifted in exchange for Russian diesel entering global markets to ease fuel costs — drew objections from a number of senators, including members of Trump's own Republican Party. Those opposing the agreement contended that its proceeds would flow toward financing Russia's military operations.
