The Russia Sanctions Waiver Was Always the Plan

Washington has a new villain, and it is a waiver. On Friday, President Donald Trump signed an executive order exempting Russia from the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act, the sweeping sanctions law he signed himself in September. The reaction was instant. Representative Don Beyer of Virginia accused the president of giving in to Russian President Vladimir Putin, according to congress.net. Here is the unpopular opinion: the Russia sanctions waiver was the most honest paragraph in the entire saga. Congress wrote the escape hatch into the law, and the diesel deal sitting underneath it was never a secret.

Congress built the escape hatch

Congress passed the Graham Act on September 16, and Trump signed it on September 18. The law was named posthumously for the late Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who died in July after years of pushing for tougher sanctions on Moscow, according to zot.news. On paper it was severe. Tariffs of up to one hundred percent would have landed on goods from the five largest purchasers of Russian oil and gas, and the package also targeted Putin, senior officials, major banks and the shadow fleet of tankers Russia uses to dodge existing restrictions, according to congress.net. Then came the fine print. The law gave the president the power to waive the entire package with a certification to Congress. Trump used it, writing that the waiver served "the national interests of the United States," according to the order itself. The sanctions were due to take effect on October 18. Days before that date, the president simply declined. That is what the Russia sanctions waiver is: a tool sitting in the law's own text.

The unpopular part is deciding who deserves the anger. A sanctions law that can be switched off with a certification was a press release, not a policy. Congress drafted the off-ramp, voted for the off-ramp and then acted surprised when someone drove down it. Directing all the fury at the Russia sanctions waiver is convenient. It lets the people who wrote the law mourn a measure they designed to be optional.

The diesel deal was never hidden

The Russia sanctions waiver did not arrive out of nowhere. Days earlier, Trump announced that the United States had agreed to buy diesel from Russia, part of an arrangement in which Moscow would release millions of tons of diesel onto the global market to bring down fuel prices, according to Reuters reporting. Diesel prices have climbed during the wars in Ukraine and Iran, and with the November midterms approaching, Republicans have pressed hard for cheaper fuel, according to the New York Ledger, while the battle over the midterms takes shape on every front. A bipartisan group of twenty-two lawmakers saw the Russia sanctions waiver coming. On October 15 they wrote to Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, urging him to enforce the law and scrap the diesel arrangement, according to Wikipedia's account of the order. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called the waiver a "weak decision," according to AFP reporting, while Ukrainian forces kept striking Russian oil refineries. Trump answered that it was "time for Ukraine to get a new president" and warned him to stop the refinery attacks, according to the Ledger.

The contradiction nobody wants to name

This is the part that makes the opinion genuinely unpopular. The Graham Act threatened to punish China and India, the largest buyers of Russian oil, for purchasing the same Russian energy the United States then arranged to buy itself. Beijing called the legislation "long-arm jurisdiction that lacks a basis in international law," according to congress.net. It is easy to dismiss that line coming from Beijing. The logic under it is harder to dodge. Washington was prepared to fine other countries for buying Russian fuel while cutting its own diesel deal with Moscow, the same week banks were rewriting the playbook on critical minerals and everyone in power treated resources as leverage. The Russia sanctions waiver did not invent that contradiction. That contradiction predates the waiver. The certification simply put it in writing. And for the record, the order left earlier Russia sanctions from previous executive orders untouched, according to the order, so this is not the end of American sanctions. It is the end of pretending this particular law would survive contact with fuel prices.

None of this makes the Russia sanctions waiver good policy. It makes the outrage around it dishonest. Congress gets to mourn a law it built to be waived, and the White House gets cheaper diesel before an election. The public gets a villain instead of a harder question: what was the sanctions law for, if a certification could end it before it ever began? The midterms are weeks away, and fuel prices will be on the ballot either way.