Late Wednesday, the House of Representatives did something it had been circling for over a year. It passed a bill that hands Donald Trump the legal authority to impose tariffs of up to 100 percent on the countries buying the most Russian oil and gas.
The vote was 262-159. Fifty-eight Democrats crossed over to support it. Seven Republicans voted no. It now sits on Trump's desk, where he's expected to sign it.
India is one of the five countries the bill is aimed at squarely.
The legislation is named the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026, after the South Carolina senator who pushed it for more than a year before his death in July. It's 61 pages long, and most of those pages deal with things that have nothing to do with India directly. Sanctions on Russian banks. Sanctions on oligarchs and their families.
A crackdown on the so-called shadow fleet of tankers that moves sanctioned Russian oil around the world. A five-year extension of the Iran Sanctions Act, through 2031, tacked on at Trump's own request.
The part that matters here is one provision. It directs the president to impose tariffs, up to 100 percent, on the five countries that buy the most Russian crude oil or natural gas or that help Russia dodge existing sanctions.
Blumenthal, the bill's co-author alongside Graham, has named those five publicly: China, India, Slovakia, Hungary, and Azerbaijan.
There's an exemption built in, too. Countries getting less than 15 percent of their natural gas from Russia and actively cutting that number further get a pass. It doesn't help India much. Russia supplied roughly 30 percent of India's crude imports in the last financial year, worth about $40.8 billion.
One more detail worth knowing. This isn't automatic. The bill gives Trump discretion over whether to actually pull the trigger, and the US Trade Representative is required to review the country list every 180 days. Nothing about the text forces a tariff to happen on any particular date.
Here's the part that should worry New Delhi more than Beijing, oddly enough.
China buys more Russian oil than India does, by volume. But GTRI, the Delhi-based trade think tank run by former Indian Trade Service officer Ajay Srivastava, has pointed out that India could still face harsher treatment, simply because the bill leaves so much up to presidential discretion. Washington has a track record here. In July 2025, the US slapped an additional 25 percent tariff on Indian goods over Russian oil purchases while leaving China untouched. That tariff wasn't lifted until February this year.
So the pattern already exists. A law with teeth pointed at five countries, applied unevenly, based on decisions made inside the White House rather than a formula in the statute
Senator Richard Blumenthal has been the loudest voice pushing this framing for months now. Back in July, he called India and China "the main culprits" behind Russia's ability to keep fighting in Ukraine. "We are hitting China and India," he said at the time, drawing a line between those two and countries he considers US allies.
This week, with the bill headed to Trump's desk, he sharpened the message further, telling India and China to clean up their act and buy oil elsewhere.
Compare that tone to what's coming out of South Block.
The Ministry of External Affairs has stuck to a version of the same line it's used for months. Spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal told reporters India is closely following developments, that the country's energy purchases are driven by its own energy security needs, and that India sources oil from multiple countries around the world. No panic, no retaliation threats. Just a version of "we're watching, and we're not changing course," repeated with minor variations depending on who's asking.
Domestically, it's a different story. Congress leader Mallikarjun Kharge went after the Modi government directly, accusing it of caving to American pressure again and again rather than pushing back. It's a familiar opposition line by now, one that surfaces every time Washington tightens the screws on India's Russian oil imports.
Strip away the politics and there's a genuinely awkward fact sitting underneath this whole debate. India's reliance on Russian crude didn't happen in a vacuum. It grew sharply after the Strait of Hormuz crisis disrupted Gulf oil supplies earlier this year, at exactly the moment Washington wanted New Delhi to be buying less Russian oil, not more.
GTRI's own analysis has argued India shouldn't panic over this bill at all. Discounted Russian crude, Srivastava has written, has lowered India's import bill, strengthened its energy security, and helped keep inflation in check. Giving that up under pressure carries real costs, and previous rounds of this exact fight have ended in tariffs being walked back within months.
That history is probably the best guide to what happens next. The bill is now law, or will be within days. What Trump actually does with the authority it hands him is a separate question, and going by the last time this played out, the answer may take a while to arrive.
The US House passed the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act 262-159 on Wednesday, sending it to Trump's desk after the Senate cleared it 86-11 in August.
The law authorises tariffs of up to 100 percent on the five largest buyers of Russian oil and gas, named by co-author Richard Blumenthal as China, India, Slovakia, Hungary and Azerbaijan, though the president has full discretion over whether to impose them.
India sources roughly 30 percent of its crude from Russia, and GTRI has warned it could face tougher treatment than China because of that discretion, pointing to a similar 25 percent tariff imposed in July 2025 and withdrawn only in February 2026.
India's foreign ministry has responded calmly, saying it is monitoring the bill and will continue buying oil based on its own energy security needs, while opposition leaders at home have accused the government of repeated appeasement of Washington.
