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Just days before a sweeping new sanctions law was set to bite, Donald Trump pulled the plug. On October 17, the president signed an order exempting Russia from sanctions and tariffs mandated under the Graham Act, waiving them before they could take effect — a move reported by the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Reuters and The Hill.
The timing is as striking as the decision itself. Washington has spent months threatening Moscow with exactly this package of punishment. Now, with one signature, Trump has shelved it. What follows is what the Graham Act actually is, what the waiver covers, and why it may matter far beyond Russia.
What the Graham Act was supposed to do
The Graham Act — named for Senator Lindsey Graham — is a sanctions-and-tariffs package designed to squeeze Russia's economy and the countries that keep trading with it. At its core, it would have imposed stiff penalties on Russian exports and, more dramatically, threatened steep tariffs on nations buying Russian energy — including a threatened 100% tariff that India, a major buyer of Russian oil, was directly in the firing line for.
The logic of the bill was coercive: make it economically ruinous for Moscow to continue the war, and make it costly for third countries to underwrite it. It was meant to be leverage — the stick that forces Russia to the negotiating table.
What the waiver actually covers
According to reports from the New York Times and Reuters, Trump's order invokes the national interest to exempt Russia from the law's sanctions and tariff provisions before they take effect. In practice, that means the penalties on Russian goods and the tariffs on Russia's trading partners — most notably India — are off the table for now.
The Kyiv Post notes the president explicitly cited US national interest as the justification. The Hill and the Wall Street Journal framed it as a pre-emptive waiver rather than a repeal: the law exists, but its teeth have been pulled before they ever sank in.
Why he did it — and what it signals about peace talks
This is where the decision gets interesting. A president does not waive his own leverage unless he believes something more valuable is in play. The most plausible reading — and the one most analysts are converging on — is that Trump is clearing the path for negotiations. Sanctions are useful as a threat; once enacted, they become a grievance. By waiving them now, Trump removes an obstacle from any peace process before it hardens into a permanent wall.
But there is a counter-reading worth taking seriously: Moscow can now pocket the relief without conceding a single thing. Leverage surrendered before a deal is struck is leverage that may never come back. That is the gamble — that the promise of future punishment matters more to Russia than the punishment itself would have.
What changes for Russia, Ukraine and India
For Russia, the immediate effect is breathing room: no new sanctions, no tariff walls, and a signal that Washington is willing to deal. For Ukraine, the picture is cloudier — Kyiv has long counted on economic pressure to bring Moscow to terms, and this decision weakens that pressure before it was even applied. And for India, the relief is concrete: as WION reported, the threatened 100% tariff on its trade with Russia is off, a significant win for New Delhi's diplomats who have been working the phones for months.
Zoom out and the pattern becomes clearer. Fiscal pressures at home — including a US budget deficit that just hit $1.99 trillion — make expensive foreign commitments harder to sustain, and the administration has shown a preference for negotiated exits over open-ended confrontation. This waiver fits that pattern: diplomacy first, leverage as the fallback.
Whether it was a masterstroke or a giveaway will be decided not in Washington, but in whatever room Trump and his counterparts next sit down to talk. Follow Global Insight for what happens next.