TOI correspondant from Washington: The US Senate on Friday approved a bill that will allow President Trump to impose 100% tariffs on the world’s top five purchasers of Russian oil or natural gas, including India, China, and Turkey.The legislation also targets countries helping Russia evade energy sanctions, Russian banks, officials, and so-called oligarchs and shadow fleet of tankers.By an overwhelming 86-11 vote, senators approved the Graham bill, formally the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026, a sweeping legislation named for the late Republican Senator, war hawk, and staunch Ukraine supporter, who died July 11. The bill now heads to the House, so the US President does not yet have a new 100% tariff bazooka just yet.Trump’s tariff menu has now become rather like a Washington restaurant: reciprocal tariffs, national-security tariffs, sectoral tariffs, country tariffs, Russia tariffs, China tariffs, and today’s chef’s special, “100% punitive tariff, subject to presidential discretion.” Tariff hee tariff, as they would say in India.There is an important difference, however. Most of Trump’s earlier tariffs were justified as instruments to correct trade deficits, protect American industry or respond to “unfair trade practices.”This one is explicitly a secondary sanction: India or China could be punished not for what they sell America, but for whom they buy energy from, a considerably more muscular and explosive use of American market power.India gets a particularly awkward deja vu, having already been through this news reel just months ago and seemingly coming out of it. In August 2025, Trump imposed an additional 25% tariff on Indian goods because India was buying Russian oil, taking the combined tariff on many Indian imports to 50%. Washington subsequently removed that additional 25% in February 2026 after India agreed to stop buying Russian oil as part of a broader trade deal (which now appears to be in coma). The US then reduced its reciprocal tariff on India to 18%.The new bill therefore raises an obvious question: if India has already been rewarded for abandoning Russian oil, why give the president another legal switch with which to threaten it? Because geopolitics, apparently, now comes with an erratic reset button wielded by a mercurial President.A 100% tariff would not necessarily mean all that trade disappears, the bill gives Trump discretion, and there are national-interest waiver provisions and exemptions. Allies and partners can also qualify for exemptions by taking meaningful steps to reduce dependence on Russian energy.India, meanwhile, has an unusually strong reason to resist: energy security. Russian oil has become an important component of its crude supply, and Indian refiners have been buying Russian crude in large quantities, particularly after disruptions to Middle Eastern supply. In March-May alone, India settled roughly $14.6 billion of imports in rupees, a surge largely associated with Russian oil purchases.The Trump administration’s tariff record makes the new measure particularly intriguing. Tariffs have been threatened, announced, postponed, imposed, doubled, negotiated down, exempted, replaced and, after the Supreme Court intervened, revoked, only for alternative tariffs to appear through different statutory authorities.The administration’s original broad IEEPA tariffs were terminated after the Supreme Court ruled in February that the president could not use that emergency-powers law to impose them. Yet tariffs did not exactly die; they merely changed legal wardrobes.The distinction matters because the Graham bill would give Congress itself a statutory framework for imposing punitive tariffs on major Russian-energy customers; it is therefore less of an executive improvisation and more of a congressional authorization for economic coercion.But most analysts assert tariff eventually is not a cheque from Beijing or New Delhi made payable to Uncle Sam; American importers would face the tariff first, with much of the cost likely passed along to American consumers or absorbed partly by suppliers and companies.The Federal Reserve found that tariffs imposed through November 2025 had raised core-goods prices by 3.1% through February 2026, accounting for essentially all the excess inflation in that category. The Yale Budget Lab estimates current tariffs will ultimately raise the US consumer price level by about 0.7%, costing the average household roughly $1,100 a year.So while President Trump claims the US is collecting billions in tariff revenue, Americans also pay billions more for imported goods and inputs.The tariff is therefore rather less like discovering oil under the White House lawn and rather more like charging yourself admission to your own amusement park.If the policy drives buyers into alternative suppliers, raises global oil prices, encourages more trade outside the dollar system or triggers retaliation against American exports, the tariff cannon can develop the traditional artillery problem: the recoil is felt by the person firing it.
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