Russia Sanctions Bill Would Hurt US More Than Russia — SkimNews
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- The Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia Act of 2026 would codify and expand sanctions on Russian officials, oligarchs, banks, and corporations; crack down on Russia's shadow fleet; and grant the president authority to impose up to 100% tariffs on the top five buyers of Russian oil and gas.
- The bill would sever Russian banks and energy corporations — including Gazprombank — from the SWIFT system and impose secondary sanctions on third-party intermediaries, though Russia has already developed workarounds including small regional banks, shell companies, stablecoin transactions, and country-to-country bartering.
- A built-in waiver exempts countries that account for less than 15% of Russian exports and are reducing their dependency, effectively narrowing the tariff provision to China, India, and Hungary.
- Tariffs on China would be counterproductive, given Beijing's leverage over rare earth minerals and Trump's upcoming September meeting with Xi Jinping, while past US sanctions on India failed to shift Russian purchasing behavior.
- The legislation is unlikely to change Putin's calculus: Putin has framed the war in Ukraine as existential and weathered sanctions since 2022, and the bill could instead reinforce his narrative that the conflict is a proxy war between Russia and the West.
- The US is positioned as the biggest loser, facing economic uncertainty, damaged ties with allies, and erosion of the dollar's geopolitical role as more countries tire of the United States using the dollar as a weapon.
Why it matters: The bill's most powerful lever — 100% tariffs on top Russian oil and gas buyers — is politically unusable: tariffs on China would derail Trump's September meeting with Xi and invite rare earth retaliation, while India has already proven resistant to US economic pressure. The SWIFT severing will further squeeze Russia, but Russian banks have built enough alternatives to weather the new penalties.
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