Washington, Jul 29: The US Senate, in a show of bipartisanship, has voted overwhelmingly to fast-track a bill that would allow US President Donald Trump to impose sanctions on major buyers of oil from Russia and Iran, which would affect countries such as India and China.
The Senate voted 86-12 on Tuesday to invoke the cloture motion to advance the Lindsey O Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026, hours after they gathered to bid a final farewell to the Senator from South Carolina, who passed away on July 11.
Cloture is a formal procedure of the Senate to set a time limit for the debate and related actions on an issue before it is put to a final vote.
Senators voted on the cloture motion after a meeting with visiting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who was here for the funeral service of the late Lindsey Graham.
Zelenskyy was in the Senate gallery, waving and smiling at the Senators as they lined up to cast their votes.
Graham, a Republican, and Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal had worked on the Russia sanctions bill for more than a year. Iran was added to the bill at the instance of Trump.
“The Lindsey Graham sanctions bill will advance the cause of freedom, and it will combat Vladimir Putin’s war machine,” Senator Roger Wicker, Republican from Mississippi and the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said before the vote.
Blumenthal said the bill also empowers the president to impose tariffs up to 100 per cent on the five largest purchasers of Russian oil and gas.
“It is carefully crafted to make sure we are not hitting our allies and that we are hitting China and India. Let’s be really blunt. China and India are the main culprits here. They purchase the vast majority of oil and gas, they are fuelling Russia’s war machine and they are doing us no favours anywhere else in the world,” Blumenthal said.
The bill, which has 62 co-sponsors, is widely expected to pass in the 100-member Senate. However, the bill may run into some resistance in the House, where Democrats are not keen to expand Trump’s tariff authority.
“It is extremely dangerous to give Trump massive new tariff powers, particularly after we’ve seen the disastrous impacts of his corrupt, chaotic, and inflationary tariff spree,” House Ways and Means ranking member Richard Neal and Senate Finance ranking member Ron Wyden said in a statement.
The bipartisan group of Senators said they were proud to announce an agreement on legislation to stop purchasers of Russian oil and gas from fuelling Putin’s war machine and to continue restricting the Iranian regime’s ability to support terrorism and build its nuclear programme.
The Lindsey O Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026 would impose primary and secondary sanctions against Russia and actors supporting its war in Ukraine.
The sanctions target Russian officials, oligarchs, their family members, foreign persons and Russian banks and financial institutions, as well as the Russian Shadow Fleet.
The legislation allows the president to impose targeted tariffs on imported goods from countries that buy the vast majority of Russian oil or gas and enable Russian sanctions evasion.
Section 113 of the bill specifically targets the five countries that purchase the largest volumes of Russian fuel or facilitate sanctions evasion through shadow fleets, threatening them with additional 100 per cent tariffs.
Apart from China and India, the other top purchasers of Russian oil are Slovakia, Hungary and Azerbaijan.
The bill calls for the US Trade Representative to reassess the top five purchasers every 180 days, to adjust tariff rates based on changes in purchasing behaviour.
Regarding Iran, the legislation extends the Iran Sanctions Act for an additional five years, keeping critical secondary restrictions in place until 2031.
Furthermore, a legislative provision limits the new tariff authority to a five-year sunset period. This ensures the powers do not become a permanent fixture of US trade policy without further renewal. (PTI)
