A bill to tighten sanctions on Russia has been rewritten to authorize the president to impose tariffs on other countries at any rate up to 500 percent.
The Sanctioning Russia Act of 2025, a bipartisan bill to tighten sanctions on Russia and force it to negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine, has been stuck in limbo for months as President Trump has withheld his support. To secure Trump’s blessing, the bill’s authors have now rewritten it to give the president broad authority to impose tariffs of up to 500 percent on all imports from dozens of countries that purchase Russian energy.
Originally, the bill would have required the president to impose tariffs of no less than 500 percent, but potentially higher, on “all goods or services imported into the United States” by countries that buy or sell “oil, uranium, natural gas, petroleum products, or petrochemical products” that originated in Russia. Such tariffs would apply to dozens of countries that purchase varying amounts of Russian energy. The European Union is the top importer of Russian natural gas, whereas China, India, and Turkey are the largest buyers of Russian crude oil and oil products. Other U.S. allies, such as Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Brazil, would also be eligible for the 500 percent tariffs.
Introduced by Senators Lindsey Graham (R., South Carolina) and Richard Blumenthal (D., Connecticut), the legislation attracted over 8o cosponsors in the Senate but faced resistance from President Trump, who pushed for greater flexibility. On Tuesday, Senator Graham said that Trump now supported the bill after he and Senator Blumenthal tweaked it “to provide expanded presidential waiver authority,” according to Politico. With the president’s support, Majority Leader John Thune announced on the Senate floor that he expected the chamber to advance the updated Russia sanctions bill within weeks.
Graham told reporters that the additional flexibility for Trump includes the power to grant a second waiver to spare countries that purchase Russian energy from the 500 percent tariffs, conditional on congressional oversight. The previous version of the bill would have allowed the president to waive tariffs on a country only once for 180 days if he determined such a waiver was “in the national security interests of the United States.”
In an exchange with National Review, however, Graham revealed that the updated text of the bill went further to give the president expansive authority to levy tariffs on all imports from eligible countries at any rate up to 500 percent. “The goal is to let him waive all of it or part of it,” said Graham, referring to tariffs on countries that purchase energy from Russia. “He could do one percent, or he could do 499.” The previous floor of 500 percent would no longer be the minimum tariff rate that Trump could impose, but “the ceiling.”
The legislation, therefore, would no longer limit the president to imposing either 500 percent tariffs or higher on a country purchasing Russian energy — which would effectively serve as a U.S. embargo — or no tariff at all through a waiver. Instead, it would empower Trump to set the tariffs at any rate he chooses, up to 500 percent, as a partial waiver.
This change sought by the White House comes just as the legal foundation of Trump’s existing tariffs on numerous countries, the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), faces a serious challenge. In May, the Court of International Trade ruled that IEEPA did not grant the president the “unlimited tariff authority” that Trump claimed it did, thereby striking down both his “liberation day” tariffs and others he had imposed earlier in his term on imports from Canada, Mexico, and China.
The Trump administration immediately appealed the decision to the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, which issued a temporary stay to allow the tariffs to remain while the court prepares to hear arguments on the case at the end of July. If Trump ultimately loses his appeal at the Federal Circuit, his IEEPA-based tariffs could be struck down permanently. In that event, the updated Sanctioning Russia Act might provide Trump with a new legal justification for many of his tariffs.
Blumenthal offered assurances that the bill would not embolden Trump’s broader trade war, telling National Review that “there are checks and balances in this bill that provide the president with appropriate waiver authority, but at the same time standards that constrain his invoking it and congressional oversight that enables us to potentially override him.”
Blumenthal named India and China as two countries that would be targeted by the secondary tariffs of 500 percent if they continued to purchase Russian energy. Those tariffs would not apply to U.S. allies in Europe that rely on Russian gas, he said, as the bill’s updated text would provide “waiver authority” for countries that supply assistance to Ukraine. “Any country that is currently supporting Ukraine, either militarily or economically, is in a different class or category than India or China, who are essentially supporting Putin’s war machine.”
It was not clear whether the updated bill would authorize the president to determine whether a country was supporting Ukraine and thus exempt from the tariffs. If so, the legislation would vest even greater discretion in the executive branch to impose tariffs on a country-by-country basis.
When asked whether he was comfortable with the bill’s final text, which has not yet been made public, Blumenthal said that he was. “Very comfortable, in fact. I’m more supportive than ever. I think the bill has actually improved because of comments made by the Finance Committee and the Foreign Relations Committee here, as well as some thoughts from the White House.”