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Trump waives Russia sanctions and 100% tariff threat days before deadline

The US president invoked a national-interest waiver in the Graham Act, suspending tariffs aimed at buyers of Russian oil and gas, including India, rather than cancelling them.

ScrollBeat DeskPublished: 17 Oct 2026, 22:33

Official 2025 portrait of US President Donald Trump. Photo released by the White House; public domain work of the US federal government. The White House via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

At a glance

Trump issued an executive order on Friday waiving sanctions and duties under the Graham Act.
The law had set an 18 October deadline for tariffs of up to 100 per cent on the five largest buyers of Russian oil and gas.
The waiver suspends the measures instead of cancelling them; earlier US sanctions remain.

US President Donald Trump has suspended sweeping new sanctions and tariffs on Russia just before they were due to start, using a waiver in the law he signed last month.

The executive order was issued on Friday and released by the White House. It waives sanctions, restrictions and duties set out in the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026. Trump said he had certified to Congress that the waiver served the national interest of the United States.

The law, signed on 18 September, gave the president 30 days to impose tariffs of up to 100 per cent on goods from the five largest buyers of Russian crude oil and natural gas — China, India, Slovakia, Hungary and Azerbaijan — as well as on countries that helped Russia evade sanctions. That deadline was 18 October.

The waiver suspends those measures rather than cancelling them. The order leaves earlier US sanctions in place and keeps Russian energy purchases under monitoring, so Trump can revive the tariffs later.

The decision follows an agreement for the United States to buy Russian diesel. Trump has said Russia will supply more than 300,000 tonnes immediately, a further 500,000 tonnes in November and 1 million tonnes after that. He has also criticised Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and suggested Ukraine needs a new leader.

American lawmakers criticised the move. Senator Richard Blumenthal, a co-author of the law, said the waivers had nothing to do with US national security and accused Trump of 'sucking up to Vladimir Putin'. Representative Don Beyer of Virginia called it a surrender to Putin and said Congress should rewrite the law so a president cannot suspend it. Republican Representative Don Bacon argued the pause would prolong the war.

Zelenskyy also objected, saying the retreat from sanctions came as Russia kept attacking Ukraine's energy infrastructure before winter.

Suspending the tariffs eases near-term pressure on India and China, whose exports had faced the 100 per cent threat, but the measures can return. For import-dependent economies such as Bangladesh, the wider question is what the shift means for global oil and freight prices.

Sources & further reading

Prothom Alo - Trump suspends Russia sanctions a day before they take effect Al Jazeera - Trump waives Russia sanctions as rift with Zelenskyy widens

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Iran says two oil tankers hit mines in Strait of Hormuz as waterway stays shut

The Revolutionary Guards say both tankers caught fire after striking naval mines on Saturday, one of them carrying more than 2 million barrels of crude. The US military disputes the account and says projectiles, not mines, are hitting the vessels.

ScrollBeat Desk17 Oct 2026, 23:25Open this article

Satellite view of the Strait of Hormuz between Iran and the Arabian Peninsula, taken by NASA's Terra satellite on 2 December 2020. Representative image of the waterway. NASA / MODIS, public domain. NASA / MODIS Land Rapid Response Team, Goddard Space Flight Center (public domain)

Iran's Revolutionary Guards said on Saturday that two oil tankers caught fire after striking naval mines in the Strait of Hormuz, the latest in a string of attacks on shipping in the waterway at the centre of the US-Iran war.

The IRGC Navy said the second supertanker, carrying more than 2 million barrels of crude oil, suffered a massive explosion in its engine room after hitting a mine while taking what it called an unauthorised route, with its tracking and radar systems switched off. Iran's state-run Press TV shared footage it said showed the vessel on fire. The Guards did not name or flag the tankers, and there was no independent confirmation of the incident.

The claim is disputed. US Central Command says it has cleared the strait of naval mines and that vessels are being struck by projectiles rather than mines. It said a container ship that sank this week, the M/V GFS Pride, was hit by an IRGC projectile, not a mine as Iran had said.

The two sides also give sharply different accounts of traffic through the strait. The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations, a Western maritime security body, reported at least 12 ships attacked in the week to 16 October, while warning that most crews were refusing to report incidents. US Central Command chief Brad Cooper said 400 ships and 100 million barrels of oil had moved through the strait over the past week and that the waterway is 'controlled by the United States and our regional partners, not Iran'. Tehran says Washington is exaggerating its progress.

Iran has kept the strait restricted since 28 February, when the United States and Israel began strikes on Iranian territory. Oil flows through Hormuz were about 11.6 million barrels per day in the seven days to 13 October, roughly 68 per cent of the 17.1 million-barrel pre-war baseline, according to the analysis firm Kpler, and Brent crude touched 110 dollars a barrel on Friday for the first time since May.

Diplomacy has not stopped entirely. Messages are still being relayed between Tehran and Washington by regional mediators including Pakistan and Qatar, though no breakthrough is expected soon.

NEXT STORY Culture & Society

CUET team wins international mortar competition in Atlanta

Team CUET C took first place overall at the Fall 2026 American Concrete Institute Mortar Workability Competition and also finished second for economical design. A second Bangladeshi team, from IUT, placed fourth.

ScrollBeat Desk17 Oct 2026, 23:24Open this article

The civil engineering building at Chittagong University of Engineering and Technology (CUET), whose student team won an international concrete competition in Atlanta. Representative campus photograph. Photo: কামরুল ইসলাম শাহীন, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0. কামরুল ইসলাম শাহীন / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

A student team from Chittagong University of Engineering and Technology (CUET) won first place overall at the Fall 2026 American Concrete Institute (ACI) Mortar Workability Competition in Atlanta, the university and the state news agency BSS said.

Team CUET C also finished second in the economical design category. The competition ran from 11 to 14 October alongside ACI's Fall convention, and 40 teams from around the world reached the final round after a selection process.

Judges gave the greatest weight to flowability, which accounted for 50 per cent of the total score, and to stability at 20 per cent. The remaining points were split among report quality (15 per cent), carbon emissions (10 per cent) and cost-effectiveness (5 per cent).

A second Bangladeshi team, from the Islamic University of Technology (IUT), placed fourth overall and took second place in the environmental design category as well as a judges' choice award in the Aesthetics in Concrete competition. Between them, the two teams representing the ACI Bangladesh Chapter won four awards.

The CUET team was advised by Dr GM Sadikul Islam, a professor in CUET's Department of Civil Engineering and faculty adviser to its ACI student chapter. The IUT team was advised by Prof Dr Tarek Uddin, president of the ACI Bangladesh Chapter.

Swarup Chandra Modak, a member of the winning team, said the competition had shown the students what they were capable of and that, with the right resources and facilities, they could demonstrate that competence anywhere in the world. Prof Sadikul Islam said CUET's ACI chapter had won six international awards since it was founded in 2018, all in online competitions, and that a first in-person win on American soil had long been a dream.