The new law was reported as a threat of 100 percent tariffs on the countries buying Russia's oil. The text says something more careful, and the difference decides whether it ever bites.
On Friday 18 September, President Trump signed the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026. The headlines led with the threat of tariffs of up to 100 percent on the biggest buyers of Russian oil and gas, above all China and India, the largest buyers of Russian crude, as CBS News put it.
Buying Russian oil is not in itself a breach of American sanctions, though buying from sanctioned Russian sellers or ships can be. The law aims at two groups: the biggest buyers by volume, if they keep buying, and the countries whose traders help Russia evade the sanctions that do exist.
A week later, on 25 September, as Xi Jinping ended his state visit to Washington, the White House recorded "consensus on recommendations for more favorable tariff treatment for $30 billion of non-sensitive goods in each direction" between the United States and China.
A law that orders tariffs on the biggest buyers of Russian oil if they keep buying, and tariff relief recommended for the biggest of them, a week apart. We found no public sign that any country has been named under the law, China included. Both can stand without anyone breaking it, and the reason is in the text: who qualifies, and three words.
The clock the law starts. Solid line: what has happened. Dashed line: what the law requires. Sources: the enrolled text of the Act; White House fact sheet, 25 September 2026. Graphic: NewsplanetAI.
Where the discretion lives
Three words, and a lock, quoted from the enrolled text of H.R. 5334. Graphic: NewsplanetAI.
Shall. Section 113 orders that "not later than 30 days" after signing, "the President shall" raise the duty on goods imported into the United States from a qualifying country. That is an order with a deadline, 18 October, and on that point the headlines were right.
Up to. The rate is "up to 100 percent," charged on top of any duties the goods already carry. The order's own verb is "increase," so the rate must go up, but nothing says by how much. As we read it, a small increase would satisfy the order.
May. Section 115 says the President "may" waive any duty or sanction in the law's Russia title by sending Congress a written certification that the waiver is in the national interest, with a report. There is no vote and no waiting period.
Two more doors sit elsewhere. Section 103 orders full sanctions on Russia's state banks and on foreign banks doing significant business with them, including a bar on opening, and a ban or strict conditions on keeping, correspondent accounts in the United States, the access to the dollar that a foreign bank lives on. But the President "is not required" to sanction such a foreign bank if "the Secretary of the Treasury determines that imposing such sanctions is not consistent with the economic or foreign policy interests of the United States," and that clause asks for no report. And in the sanctions sections, which people, ships and banks are covered is, again and again, what "the President determines."
Compare the way out at the far end of the law. Lifting the measures on Russia needs a certification that it has "signed a peace agreement that is accepted by the free and independent Government of Ukraine" and ceased hostilities; for a buyer country, a certification that it has stopped, backed by "reliable assurances." Either way, the termination then waits 30 days (60 in late summer), and Congress can stop it only by enacting a joint resolution the President could veto. Congress put a lock on the exit and left a door in the wall: a waived measure never has to pass through the exit at all. And the law itself, apart from its Iran extension, expires five years after signing.
What forces the choice into view is paper, sent to Congress. At least ten days before imposing or changing a duty on a buyer or facilitator country, the President or the Trade Representative must send six committees a written justification that details its methodology; a waiver needs its certification and report. Those documents go to Congress. The law does not require that they be published. Whether a court could compel action on a missed "shall" is unsettled; the clearer remedy is Congress.
Two lists, and only one can be counted
The buyers. A country qualifies if it was among the five largest importers of Russian crude or gas in the twelve months before signing, and if it "knowingly made new purchases" on or after the thirtieth day. The ranking is largely a matter of customs data, though the Congressional Research Service notes open questions about whose purchases count as a country's. The second condition is a door: a large buyer that makes no new purchase on or after the thirtieth day falls outside this half of the law. And there is a wrinkle. The duties are due by the thirtieth day, but a buyer qualifies only for purchases on or after that same day. Read literally, as the Congressional Research Service noted before the final vote, the two windows overlap by a single day. That gives the President an argument, not an established exemption, that no buyer yet qualifies on 18 October. A separate exception spares gas purchases by a country that took less than 15 percent of Russia's gas exports and has taken "significant steps" to reduce them.
The facilitators. The second list is "the top 5 countries facilitating Russian oil sanctions evasion," defined by where the helpers are located, operate or are organised. The law gives no measure for "top." The ranking is the government's to make.
Section 102 reaches further, to the owners, managers, insurers and captains of tankers moving Russian oil around sanctions, and to the operators of ports that let sanctioned ships call. It lets a ship's listing by the United Kingdom, the European Union, the Group of Seven or any single member of the Five Eyes intelligence alliance serve as prima facie evidence. Other governments' ship listings can become American evidence.
Why the door may be used
The deadline arrives in the middle of an oil shortage. Before the war that began on 28 February, roughly a fifth of the world's oil passed through the Strait of Hormuz. In the week to 20 September, IMF PortWatch counted about three transits a day of every kind, against about eighty-eight a day in September 2025; PortWatch counts only ships that broadcast their position, and ship counts are not oil volumes, but the collapse is plain. The US Energy Information Administration put American diesel at $6.53 a gallon on 21 September. At the summit, by the White House's account, "President Trump urged President Xi to increase production of refined petroleum products to stabilize global supply." China's readouts do not mention it.
A tariff on China's or India's goods does not touch a barrel directly. It is meant to make them stop buying, and if the largest buyers stop, their barrels must go somewhere. A sanction can do two things to a barrel of oil. It can send the barrel the long way round, and then the seller mostly pays: researchers at the Dallas Federal Reserve found that Russia's oil export revenue fell through its price rather than its volume, with Russian Urals crude selling at an added discount of about $32 a barrel to Brent in March 2023, narrowing to $13 by September. Or it can take the barrel off the market, and then everyone pays, because oil trades in one linked market with many prices. Tariffs at full strength on the largest buyers, while traffic through the strait that carried a fifth of the world's oil has collapsed, risk the second outcome, and it lands on American drivers too.
None of that tells us what the President will do. It is an economic reason an administration might use the flexibility the law gives it.
Who is being asked to pay
A tariff on a facilitator country is not aimed at the facilitators by name. It falls on that country's goods sold into the United States, so it works by handing a job to its government: police the traders, ship managers and banks operating under your laws, or your exporters face higher barriers to the American market. The duty itself is paid by the American importer.
Sanctions pressure has prompted a local regulator to act before, at the scale of one bank. Washington sanctioned Russia's MTS Bank on 24 February 2023; on 31 March the central bank of the United Arab Emirates cancelled the licence of its Abu Dhabi branch, citing "the sanctions risks associated with the bank after the designation." It happened again this week, when the Emirates grounded Iranian airlines, citing an American ban (see our ledger below).
The question is whether it works at the scale of a country with reasons not to. The Emirates, where many of the traders and ship managers named in Western sanctions over Russian oil are registered, and its neighbours have been struck repeatedly since February. They are being asked to police their own ports and banks in exchange for access to the American market. The buyers are pushing back too: on 23 September India's foreign minister raised the law with the Secretary of State and said he had "reiterated India's interests and concerns."
Our own count of the American, British and European sanctions lists, run on 22 September, shows a pattern worth investigating. Across the three lists, 911 distinct entities under all programmes give an Emirati address; the largest groups we could classify are trading companies, ship managers and oil traders. On the American list, entries under the Russia programme with an Emirati address appear 18 times in the first quarter of 2025 and not once from April 2025 to our count. Those dates are when each entry first appeared in the dataset we used, not official designation dates, and a zero under one programme is not a zero in all Russia-linked action. Britain, by contrast, sanctioned 175 companies in one February 2026 package aimed at a Russian oil-trading network; 139 of them, by our count, give an Emirati address. Under the new law, British listings of ships can count as American evidence. Whether Washington names new Emirati-based targets in Russia-related actions is one of the things the coming months will show, and next week we look at why so much of this trade runs through the Emirates.
What we will be able to see
As of 26 September we found no public determination, justification, waiver or proclamation under the law. Watch for:
- by about 8 October, justifications due in Congress if duties are to land on the 18th;
- by 18 October, duties in the Federal Register, or word of waiver certifications;
- whether any country is named a facilitator, and whether the Treasury uses the bank clause.
We can only see what becomes public. If 18 October passes with no public sign of duties, a waiver, or a stated reading that no country yet qualifies, that will not prove that nothing was sent. It will mean the paper, if it exists, stayed out of view, and we will say so and ask the committees.
Updates on two earlier tripwires
26 July, "What They Aren't Bombing." We wrote that the detours around Hormuz, not the chokepoint, are the target set: "A chokepoint is worth exactly what the alternatives cost." The pattern held. Drones launched from Iraq struck Saudi Arabia's East-West pipeline on 10 September and it was shut on the 11th. The Houthis claimed attacks at Yanbu, its Red Sea terminus, that Saudi Arabia did not confirm. Around 19 to 21 September, satellite imagery and ship-tracking data showed six or seven supertankers loading at Saudi terminals inside the Gulf, back through the strait the pipeline exists to avoid. One difference from our framing: in April we reported Iran striking the pipeline; this time the drones were launched from Iraq, and who is responsible has not been established.
30 August, "The Siege Engine." Of the Emirates' 19 August suspension of trade with Iran, we wrote: "price the announcement, not the rupture, until an instrument appears." For five weeks none did, and New Lines Magazine described the trade as slowed, not stopped. Then, on 23 September, the Emirates' central bank barred the eight offices of Iran's Bank Melli in the country from Iran-linked transactions, on financial-crime compliance grounds, and on 24 September its aviation authority suspended Iranian airlines "in compliance with a US ban." Both are narrow, neither is the trade measure the suspension announced, and both landed where Washington had already acted: Bank Melli is on the American sanctions list, and the United States designated Iranian airlines on 8 September.
Where this comes from
Our own work, cited above
- What They Aren't Bombing, 26 July 2026, and The Siege Engine, 30 August 2026: the two tripwires.
- Our count of Emirati-address entries on the US (OFAC), UK and EU sanctions lists, run 22 September 2026 through the OpenSanctions API: 911 distinct entities across the three lists, all programmes. American dates are the dates each entry first appeared in the OpenSanctions dataset, not official designation dates.
Primary documents and data
- H.R. 5334, enrolled bill (Public Law 119-111), Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026, US Government Publishing Office: sections 102, 103, 113, 115, 117 and 203. The Act is named for the senator, who died on 11 July 2026 (NBC News, 12 July).
- The White House, notice of signing, 18 September 2026, and fact sheet on the state visit of President Xi Jinping, 25 September 2026.
- Congressional Research Service, Legal Sidebar LSB11474, 3 September 2026: the single-day overlap in section 113's dates; open questions on whose purchases count.
- IMF PortWatch, Strait of Hormuz daily transits, settled through 20 September 2026, as held by our observatory. AIS-based, so a floor.
- US Energy Information Administration: weekly retail diesel, week of 21 September 2026; Today in Energy, 16 June 2025, on the Strait of Hormuz.
- Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, Kilian and Rapson, 14 May 2024: the Urals discount; price, not volume.
- US Treasury, 24 February 2023, and Central Bank of the UAE, 31 March 2023: MTS Bank. US Treasury, 8 September 2026: sanctions on Iranian airlines.
Reporting
- CBS News, 18 September 2026: the signing; China and India as the largest buyers.
- Politico, 24 February 2026: the British package against the 2Rivers oil network.
- Reuters via Al-Monitor, 23 September 2026, and Jaishankar's post the same day: the Rubio and Jaishankar meeting.
- Al Jazeera, 11 September 2026, and Reuters via the Jerusalem Post, 16 to 24 September 2026: the East-West pipeline strike and shutdown; the Houthi claims at Yanbu. The National, 22 September, and Gulf News, 23 September 2026: the tanker estimates (satellite imagery and MarineTraffic).
- New Lines Magazine, 15 September 2026; The National, 23 and 24 September 2026: the Emirates suspension, Bank Melli and the Iranian airlines.
Interested parties, reported as such
- The White House: the fact sheet is the American account of the summit. China's foreign ministry readout of 25 September does not mention tolls, refined products or the $30 billion list.
- The Houthis: their claims at Yanbu, unconfirmed by Saudi Arabia.
- India's foreign minister: his account of his own meeting.
Images
- Timeline and clause panel drawn by NewsplanetAI; statute quotations copied from the enrolled text.
A note on method
- This newsletter is written with AI assistance, including Anthropic's Claude. The statute is quoted from the enrolled text. Where we read the law rather than quote it, the text says so.