President Trump waived sweeping new Graham Act sanctions and tariffs on Russia two days before they took effect, citing peace talks and drawing sharp pushback from Zelenskyy and several lawmakers.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order Friday that waived every operative Russia-related section of a sanctions-and-tariffs law named for the late Sen. Lindsey Graham, just as those penalties were set to hit on Oct. 18.
ABC News reported that Trump told Congress the waivers served the national interest, and the White House said enforcing the new measures now would block ongoing efforts to end the war between Russia and Ukraine. The move is Trump’s second Russia sanctions waiver in as many weeks and lands amid a diesel-supply arrangement with Moscow aimed at easing rising fuel costs for Americans.
Congress built presidential waiver power into the statute. Trump used it. That choice has set off a fight with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and with senators in both parties who wanted the new penalties locked in immediately.
White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers defended the order Saturday and kept the focus on ending the fighting.
"President Trump has been clear that he wants to see this brutal war come to an end. As talks continue, this Act provides the President with additional authorities to pursue a peaceful resolution. Enforcing the sanctions provisions now would impede ongoing U.S. efforts to negotiate a durable and comprehensive peace agreement between Ukraine and Russia. The President retains the ability to exercise these authorities at any time if he determines that doing so would advance national interests."
Rogers’s statement underscored a simple point: the law gave Trump tools, and he is using them while negotiations continue rather than locking in maximum economic pressure on a fixed calendar. The order leaves the door open. Waivers stay in place until the president or the secretary of state, working with relevant Cabinet secretaries, decides further action is warranted.
Friday’s order does not erase earlier Russia sanctions imposed by executive order. It does waive a statutory requirement that those prior sanctions remain locked in place, and it suspends the new mandates Congress wrote into the Graham measure.
The waived package was designed to hit Russia hard and fast. It required tariffs of up to 500% on all Russian goods, including oil and gas. It also required tariffs of up to 100% on the top five buyers of Russian crude oil and natural gas that keep purchasing it, plus the top five countries helping Russia dodge oil sanctions.
Banking and finance provisions went with them. The order waives mandates to sanction foreign banks that do significant business with Russian state-owned banks and the financial messaging services used to evade sanctions. It also waives bans on purchases of Russian sovereign debt, U.S. investment in Russia, and U.S. banks and brokers processing transfers to the Russian government or for the benefit of Russian officials.
Trump also waived a section that would have allowed sanctions to end if Russia signed a peace deal accepted by Ukraine and stopped hostilities, while leaving Congress able to block a potential termination. Russia-related provisions of the law were otherwise slated to run until 2031. Trump signed the underlying bill into law last month after large bipartisan margins in Congress.
The waiver did not arrive in isolation. Last week the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control issued a general license, running through April, that authorizes the sale, delivery, and import of Russian diesel into the United States. The arrangement calls for Russia to supply hundreds of thousands of tons of diesel to U.S. and global markets.
Reporting tied the timing to Trump’s effort to ease climbing diesel prices by turning to that supply. On Tuesday, before the Friday order, Sens. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, Thom Tillis of North Carolina, Susan Collins of Maine, and John Cornyn of Texas urged Trump to rescind the diesel deal and put the new sanctions into force. He went the other direction.
For households and truckers watching pump prices, the White House is treating fuel costs and a negotiated end to the war as linked national interests, not separate files. Critics call that a gift to Moscow. The administration calls it leverage and timing.
Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer of New York framed the waiver as economic life support for Russia.
"Trump just gave Putin the best birthday gift he’ll get this year. By giving the Russian economy life support Trump’s deal with the devil keeps getting dirtier."
Tillis, one of the Republicans who pressed Trump on Tuesday, went further after the order landed.
"Beyond irresponsible. What part of enforcing a law passed 86-11 by the Senate does the President and his advisors not understand? It’s unconscionable that this administration is capitulating to a Russian dictator who illegally invaded Ukraine and butchers innocent civilians every single day."
Cornyn said Graham “would be appalled” and shared commentary calling for a congressional investigation. The 86-11 Senate tally Tillis cited reflects the wide margin the bill enjoyed before Trump signed it, and before the same statute’s waiver clauses came into play.
Those senators wanted automatic enforcement. The statute they passed also handed the president authority to pause it. Trump exercised that authority and told Congress the national interest required the pause.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy posted on X, shared a photo with the late senator, and rejected the waiver outright.
"I want to thank both Democrats and Republicans who supported his bill. That was a major victory: this truly bipartisan support. And now, the decision to undo all of this, to block all of it, seems wrong to me. And it definitely helps only the Russians. It only fuels their satisfaction and their desire to keep killing people. This certainly does not stop the war."
Zelenskyy’s complaint tracks the broader tension with Washington over how hard and how fast to squeeze Moscow while talks continue. He called bipartisan passage a major victory and the waiver a block that aids Russia. The White House answers that forcing the new penalties now would impede a durable peace deal.
Not every Republican on Capitol Hill joined the pile-on. Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, who voted against the bill, welcomed the executive order.
"I was one of only 7 republicans to vote against the short-sighted Lindsay(sic) Graham sanctions bill. Glad to see Trump has used the executive authority granted to him by Congress to waive almost all of the provisions of this stupid law that pertain to Russia."
Massie’s point is procedural as much as policy: Congress wrote waiver authority into the text, Trump used it, and the Russia sections Massie opposed are the ones now suspended. That is how the statute works.
Sen. Lindsey Graham died suddenly in July after lobbying hard for the measure that now carries his name. Trump signed the bill last month. The new sanctions and tariffs were set to take effect Oct. 18. On Friday, two days out, Trump waived the operative Russia provisions and notified Congress that the step served the national interest. The order itself did not spell out further detail beyond that finding.
Photo captions from Oct. 16 placed Trump on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington and Zelenskyy at an EU summit stop in Brussels, a snapshot of the same week the waiver fight broke open. The sequence is tight: diesel license last week, senators’ Tuesday demand to reverse course and enforce, Friday’s blanket Russia waiver, Saturday’s White House defense.
Existing executive-order sanctions remain on the books. The new statutory hammer does not. Trump keeps the option to reimpose the waived authorities whenever he judges that national interests require it. Peace talks, diesel supply, and statutory discretion are the frame the administration is using. Critics want maximum pressure on Moscow’s calendar, not the president’s.
Presidents who inherit wars also inherit the duty to end them without kneecapping American workers at the pump, and the Graham Act left that call with the commander in chief who just made it.
