President Donald Trump signed a sweeping Russia and Iran sanctions bill into law on Friday, the White House announced, turning a measure named for the late Sen. Lindsey Graham into a new set of economic weapons aimed at the oil money funding Vladimir Putin's war in Ukraine.

The Russia sanctions bill, formally the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act, goes after Russian oil and gas exports, the shadow fleet of tankers that move them, and the banks and financial institutions tied to the Kremlin's war effort. It also extends sanctions on Iran's energy and weapons sectors that were due to expire after this year.

The piece with the biggest bite is the tariff power. The law authorizes levies of up to 100% on countries that rank among the top five buyers of Russian oil and gas, a list that includes China and India.

How it got through Congress

The House passed the bill Wednesday in a 262-159 vote. Fifty-eight Democrats broke with their party's leadership to join all but seven Republicans in favor, according to Reuters. The Senate had already cleared it in August by 86 to 11.

The bill was named for Graham, the South Carolina Republican who introduced it with dozens of senators in April 2025 and championed it for months before his death on July 11. It sat stalled until July of this year, when Trump gave congressional leaders the go-ahead to schedule a vote. Reuters described it as the most significant Ukraine-related legislation Congress has passed since Trump returned to the White House in January 2025.

The road to passage had friction on both sides. House Democratic leaders, including Reps. Gregory Meeks and Don Beyer, opposed the bill because they said it would hand Trump too much tariff power and could raise prices for Americans. CNN reported that nearly a dozen Republicans had quietly lobbied Speaker Mike Johnson to strip out the tariff provisions, worried about price spikes ahead of the midterms, but Johnson refused.

What the law does to Russian oil

The "shadow fleet" the bill targets is made up of aging tankers, many flagged in other countries, that Russia uses to move crude outside the price caps and sanctions imposed after the 2022 invasion. Cutting that fleet off from insurers and ports has been a priority for Kyiv and its allies for months.

The tariff threat in the Russia sanctions bill is aimed at the buyers rather than the sellers. China and India are among the top purchasers of Russian oil named in the debate over the legislation, and neither has shown much interest in cutting those purchases voluntarily. The law puts that choice back in front of them, with a steep tariff attached.

Whether the threat lands depends on how aggressively the administration uses the tools the Russia sanctions bill provides. US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer would determine the final tariff level, and the White House has not said which countries it will target first. Supporters of the bill on both sides argue the tariff authority is limited and carefully tailored, and that fears of an economy-wide shock are overblown.

Reactions in Kyiv, Moscow and Beijing

Ukraine's reaction was immediate. President Volodymyr Zelensky thanked Trump on X for signing the legislation and praised Graham's push behind it. "Senator Graham never doubted for a second that America has enough strength to stand up to dictators and achieve results if it acts THE RIGHT WAY," Zelensky wrote. He added that the best way to honor Graham's memory would be to implement the law fully and swiftly.

Rep. Michael McCaul, the Texas Republican who led the House fight for the bill, said it "will force" Putin to the negotiating table. "Evil is on the march, history is calling, and now is the time to act," he said on the House floor Wednesday, arguing the bill would keep Putin's ambitions in check and prevent him from marching further into Eastern Europe.

China, for its part, pushed back before the ink was dry. A Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson said Thursday that Beijing "consistently opposed long-arm jurisdiction that lacks a basis in international law and has not been authorized by the UN Security Council," according to Reuters. For more detail on the bill's passage, see Reuters' report on the House vote.