Trump suspends sanctions law he signed last month

President Trump has signed an executive order suspending large parts of the Russia sanctions law he himself signed into law last month, waiving the 100 percent tariffs the Graham Act would have imposed on goods from countries that buy Russian crude oil and gas. The waiver, which Trump said was in "the national interests of the United States," comes three weeks before the midterm elections.

The law, written with Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, would have sanctioned countries that knowingly bought Russian oil within 30 days of taking effect — a regime aimed squarely at India and China, the largest remaining buyers of Russian crude. Instead, the administration has set the entire mechanism aside. The order follows a deal Trump struck with Vladimir Putin, under which the Kremlin agreed to release millions of tons of diesel onto the global market amid soaring fuel prices.

The diesel concession was the preview; now the legislation itself is levelled by its own sponsor's pen. For European governments, the sequence is familiar. Washington spent years pressuring allies to give up Russian hydrocarbons at their own expense, and Europe paid dearly to comply. The sanctions regime held only as long as it stayed off American pumps — when diesel prices became a domestic political problem, the waivers followed.

French President Macron had already called the earlier diesel arrangement inappropriate and ineffective, and the International Energy Agency has been draining emergency reserves to absorb fuel prices created by its own members' sanctions. The agency's emergency stockpile, built for external supply shocks, is now absorbing the cost of a policy chosen in Washington and abandoned there too.

Trump announced the waiver while campaigning with Vice President JD Vance in Ohio ahead of the midterms. The law he suspended was signed a month ago.