Donald Trump signed the executive order Implementing the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026 on 16 October, two days before the Act's 18 October trigger date1. He had signed the Act itself in September. The order's second section sets a 500% duty increase on Russian goods2. It also sets 100% on goods from the five largest importers of Russian crude and gas that make new purchases from 18 October, and on the five largest facilitators of Russian oil sanctions evasion.
Section 4 then waives those duties and most of the Act's sanctions under section 115(a), the Act's national-interest waiver3. A certification and report went to Congress under section 115(b). The order names no ceasefire, no talks and no other Russian condition. China and India, the largest buyers of Russian crude, face no Graham Act tariff, and Washington never collected any of the duties.
Section 4(d) keeps the waiver in force until the President or the Secretary of State decides otherwise4. The duties can therefore be imposed without a new vote in Congress, which turns the Act's tariff on Russia's biggest customers into a standing threat held by the executive alone. Defenders of the order can point out that Congress wrote the waiver into section 115 itself. The 16 October order leaves existing Russia sanctions untouched; those rest on a separate national emergency order.
The order lands a week after the US Treasury licensed Russian diesel under General License 135, a sanctions exemption that also allows imports into the United States, and after Moscow began lifting its own export curbs. A cargo of about 40,000 tonnes of diesel loaded at the Baltic port of Primorsk on 13 October and sailed for Morocco, according to London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG) shipping data reported by Reuters5. The same day, the Kremlin readout of Vladimir Putin's call with Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed, president of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), described the diesel supplies as "the agreements reached" in Putin's call with Trump6.
