The U.S. Senate just passed the ‘sanctions bill from hell.’ Is Russia in trouble?

On August 7, the U.S. Senate passed a bill to impose new sanctions on Russia. The legislation had been championed over the past year by Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, one of the strongest supporters of Ukraine in Washington. Graham died on July 11, a day after visiting Kyiv. In the media, the legislation has often been dubbed the “sanctions bill from hell.”

That description is probably overstated in the bill’s current form.

Graham and Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal originally proposed imposing 500 percent tariffs on all countries purchasing Russian energy. That would clearly have risked triggering a new global trade war.

After Graham’s death, Blumenthal introduced a less sweeping version. It represented a compromise between the desire of lawmakers from both parties and the White House to honor the late senator’s memory, and the Trump administration’s willingness to escalate tensions with China and India, the Kremlin’s main trading partners.

The Russia-related provisions (the legislation also includes measures targeting Iran, which were added at President Donald Trump’s request) would:

• impose direct sanctions on much of Russia’s political and military leadership, including the president, members of the government, the chief of the General Staff, and the heads of the country’s security agencies;
• impost direct sanctions on major state-owned companies, banks including Sberbank, VTB and Gazprombank, the Central Bank of Russia, infrastructure projects, and Russia’s “shadow fleet” of oil tankers;
• impose 500 percent tariffs on all Russian imports into the United States;
• impose 100 percent tariffs on the five largest buyers of Russian energy, rather than on all purchasers, as originally proposed.

Additional sanctions on Russian officials and companies are unlikely to significantly increase pressure on the Kremlin. Nor are restrictions on Russian imports likely to have much impact, given that trade between the two countries totaled only about $5 billion in 2025.

The more consequential provision is the one that remains — albeit in a watered-down form — imposing tariffs on major buyers of Russian oil and gas. The prohibitive tariffs would still primarily threaten China and India.

The bill, however, includes one crucial caveat: the U.S. president would have the authority to decide whether to impose those tariffs in individual cases. That provision, which would give Trump a powerful new tool for shaping U.S. trade policy, has become one of the bill’s most controversial features and casts uncertainty over its future.

That’s precisely the point of contention. Critics argue that the measure relies on tariffs, not sanctions.

The leading opponent of the bill in its current form was Senator Rand Paul, the only Republican to speak out against it. Nine Democrats and independent Senator Bernie Sanders also opposed the measure.

Paul argued that the proposed 100 percent tariffs on the largest buyers of Russian energy would do less to weaken Russia’s war effort or help Ukraine than to raise prices for American consumers.

Writing in The Daily Caller, Paul argued:

Paul also argues that the bill delegates powers to the president that belong to Congress. In his column, he noted that Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution gives Congress — not the president — the authority to levy taxes and duties, and that those powers cannot be delegated to the executive branch. Under the bill, he argued, lawmakers would have little choice but to watch as Trump launches additional trade wars.

Experts also expressed concerns that the president would inevitably abuse the authority granted to him. Edward Fishman, a former State Department official who worked on sanctions policy, told The Wall Street Journal that the tariffs “may well not be used as intended to pressure Russia, but rather as a way for Trump to wage trade wars against friends and foes alike.”

To more effectively pressure Moscow and support Ukraine, Fishman argued, Washington should impose secondary sanctions, not secondary tariffs, on buyers of Russian energy and the intermediaries that facilitate those purchases, including refineries, banks, and oil traders.

Because Democrats compromised, both to increase pressure on the Kremlin and its allies and to honor Graham’s memory.

Lawmakers interviewed by The Wall Street Journal noted that the threat of secondary tariffs on India in 2025 had some effect, prompting New Delhi to reduce its purchases of Russian oil.

However, those lawmakers did not mention that after the outbreak of the broader war in the Middle East, India not only reversed that decline but went on to import record volumes of Russian energy. Graham’s sanctions package might bring that figure down again.

Probably not before the fall. The House of Representatives, where Republicans also hold a narrow majority, is in recess until August 31.

Supporters of the bill have already begun rallying support in the House. But it is extremely difficult to predict what the further debate will lead to and which position will prevail: solidarity with the late Graham or a reluctance to grant Trump new powers.

One can reasonably assume that if the bill passes Congress in its current form, the president will not oppose it, given the additional powers it would grant him.

Even if the so-called “sanctions bill from hell” eventually prompt China and India to reduce their purchases of Russian energy, they are likely to be used only if relations between the Kremlin and the Trump administration deteriorate significantly. That remains a possibility, but it is difficult to assess how likely it is.

The White House is unlikely to seek a sharp escalation in pressure on Moscow unless it concludes that Russia is approaching either a strategic military defeat or a severe economic crisis. That’s not happening yet, though the Kremlin has reason for concern.

Trump, meanwhile, could face growing pressure at home. On August 12, Democratic Senators Elizabeth Warren, who voted against Graham’s sanctions bill, and Chris Coons wrote to Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent demanding an explanation for why the administration has gone 17 months without imposing new sanctions on companies and other entities that help Russia circumvent existing restrictions.

The most recent U.S. sanctions took effect in the fall of 2025, targeting Rosneft, Lukoil, and dozens of their subsidiaries. Warren and Coons argued that while those measures were painful, Russia continues to evade them. With peace talks stalled, they said, the administration has no justification for holding back additional pressure on the Kremlin. They requested a response from Rubio and Bessent by August 28.