The president’s order pauses tariffs and penalties that Congress passed last month, a decision the administration ties to strained energy markets that are felt acutely in California, where diesel now tops $8 a gallon.
By Staff Reporter
President Trump on Friday night waived nearly all of the sanctions and tariffs in a Russia sanctions law he signed only a month ago, drawing rebukes from members of both parties, including Californians in Congress who had pressed for the law to be enforced.
The executive order, titled “Implementing the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026,” formally sets out the law’s penalties, including a 500 percent duty on Russian goods and 100 percent duties on goods from the five largest buyers of Russian crude oil and natural gas, and then waives them in the same document. It also waives most of the law’s sanctions on Russian officials, banks and the shadow fleet of tankers used to evade earlier embargoes. The president certified to Congress, as the law requires, that the waivers are “in the national interests of the United States,” and the order says they will remain in effect until the president or the secretary of state decides “that further action is appropriate.”
The tariff on buyers of Russian energy was to apply to purchases made on or after Sunday, Oct. 18. The countries most exposed, the BBC reported, are China and India.
The administration’s case
The White House has not published the report on its reasoning that it says it sent to Capitol Hill. Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters on Saturday that Mr. Trump wanted to take 60 days “to analyze their impact on the U.S. and global economy given the pressure on global energy supplies,” according to NBC News.
Mr. Trump, asked on Saturday why he had acted, said: “It’s a very good decision, and it’s going to be a decision that’s good for the country, and I think good for the world because we’re really at a world stage.”
The order follows the president’s announcement last week of a deal with President Vladimir V. Putin to release hundreds of thousands of tons of Russian diesel onto the global market. Diesel prices have risen almost 70 percent since the war with Iran began in February, NBC News reported. Kirill Dmitriev, a Russian envoy, called the order “an important and truly historic moment” and said the sanctions would have inflicted “serious damage” on American and global markets, according to the BBC.
Not all reaction was critical. The Foundation for India and Indian Diaspora Studies, a U.S.-based advocacy group, thanked him for what it called “a pragmatic pause” on oil-import tariffs, the Indian news agency IANS reported.
A rare Republican rebuke
The law, named for the late Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who died in July, passed the Senate 86 to 11. Several Republicans who usually stand with the president broke with him. Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina called the waiver “beyond irresponsible” and asked, “What part of enforcing a law passed 86-11 by the Senate does the President and his advisors not understand?” Senator Ted Cruz of Texas said on Fox News that the decision “was a mistake,” while allowing that the president was “understandably” focused on diesel prices. Senator Darline Graham, who co-sponsored the bill named for her brother, said she disagreed but added, “It’s up to him whether he chooses to use” the law.
Democrats were blunter. Representative Gregory W. Meeks of New York, the ranking Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said in a statement that Mr. Trump “has had the power to sanction Russia for years. What he lacks is the will.”
The California stake
California’s representatives were among those who had tried to head off the waiver. On Thursday, Representative Jim Costa, a Fresno Democrat on the Foreign Affairs Committee, helped lead a bipartisan letter urging full enforcement before the Oct. 18 deadline. “Utilizing the tools for economic pressure in this law will be decisive in forcing Putin to take peace talks seriously,” the lawmakers wrote.
Representative Ami Bera, a Democrat whose district covers much of Sacramento County, wrote on X on Saturday that the waiver “should leave no doubt” that the administration was abandoning Ukraine. The issue carries particular weight in the capital region: the Sacramento metropolitan area has more immigrants from Ukraine than any other in California, about 20,000, and ranks first in the nation in the share of its population born in Ukraine, according to the Public Policy Institute of California.
Representative John Garamendi, a Democrat from Solano County, had already objected to the diesel arrangement. In an Oct. 14 statement, he said the more than 300,000 tons of Russian diesel involved “represents less than a single day of diesel consumption by the American transportation sector and will do little to meaningfully reduce the price Americans pay at the pump.”
The economic argument cuts in more than one direction for California. The state pays more for fuel than any other: the average retail price of diesel in California was $8.09 a gallon in the week of Oct. 12, nearly $1.91 above the national average and $3.15 higher than a year earlier, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Diesel moves the trucks that carry Central Valley produce and port cargo, so any relief would ripple through the state’s economy.
At the same time, enforcing the secondary tariffs would have meant steep new duties on goods from China and India, major trading partners whose imports flow through the ports of Oakland, Los Angeles and Long Beach. The waiver spares importers that cost, at least for now.
What happens next lies largely with Congress. Mr. Meeks said he had introduced a bipartisan bill to end what he called the administration’s “partnership with the Russian energy industry” and urged lawmakers to fix the Graham law. With the midterm elections 16 days away, any such measure faces a narrow window, and the 60-day review Mr. Rubio described would end well after voters have gone to the polls.
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