On 16 October 2026, President Trump issued an executive order whereby he waived (Section 4 of the executive order) for an indefinite period of time additional sanctions set out in Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026.
The Graham Act set out the framework for introducing additional sanctions against Russia with the new elements focused on preventing the exportation of Russian crude and gas to third-party jurisdictions. We discussed the main provisions of the Graham Act in our video.
This waiver does not effect any sanctions against Russia imposed outside the framework of the Graham Act (Section 4 of the executive order). All existing sanctions remain in force unchanged by the executive order.
We anticipated that it is unlikely that the Graham Act would result in the automatic imposition of additional sanctions against Russia. It is noteworthy, however, that the legal option chosen by US President to achieve this end result was to introduce additional primary duties (targeting Russian exports to the US) and secondary duties (targeting exports to the US of third-party countries, being top purchasers of the Russian crude or gas) at their highest rates of 500% and 100% and then automatically to waive them. Interestingly other sanctions were waived without being introduced first by the executive order.