The legislation will give President Trump the power to apply 100% tariffs on countries buying Russian oil
The US Senate has approved a bill allowing President Donald Trump to impose 100% tariffs on the largest purchasers of Russian oil and gas. The bill was the brainchild of Senator Lindsey Graham, who tried multiple times to pass it before he died last month.
The bill, titled ‘The Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026’, passed the Senate by 86 votes to 11 on Friday, with Graham’s sister Darline, who was appointed to his seat, reading out the result. Trump has already said he would sign the legislation, meaning it will become law if it passes the House of Representatives next week.
Senator Rand Paul was the only Republican to vote against the bill. Independent Senator Bernie Sanders and nine progressive Democrats, including former presidential hopeful Elizabeth Warren, also voted against it.
The legislation empowers Trump to impose tariffs of up to 100% on the top five purchasers of Russian oil and gas, a list that includes China and India. An earlier version of the bill would have increased these tariffs to 500% and applied them with or without Trump’s authorization.
Trump reportedly agreed to the final bill on the condition that he decide whether or not to impose the tariffs.
The bill was passed less than a month after Graham’s sudden death from heart disease. At a funeral service in Washington last week, Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky met with more than 60 Senators and lobbied for the bill’s passage, urging them to hold a vote – and press Trump to send weapons to Kiev – “as quickly as possible, without unnecessary bureaucracy.”
Graham met with Zelensky ten times since the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022 and at the time of his death had just returned from touring weapons factories in Kiev. Graham repeatedly lobbied for maximum US military aid to Ukraine, suggested that the US shoot down Russian jets over Ukraine, and in March 2022, called for the assassination of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“Today, President Zelensky is watching from Ukraine, and Putin is watching from Moscow,” Senator Richard Blumenthal, who co-sponsored the bill, said after the vote. “I would like to think Lindsey Graham is watching too,” he added.
The bill also applies sanctions to Putin, senior Kremlin officials, Russian banks and business figures, and the Iranian energy and arms sectors. The sanctions are mostly symbolic, as almost all of Moscow and Tehran’s elites have already been sanctioned by the US.
