US Congress Sends Lindsey O. Graham Russia-Iran Sanctions & Tariff Act to Trump

Washington’s attempt to weaponise access to its market to curb an adversary’s oil revenue echoes the 1941 US oil embargo on Imperial Japan and the 1986 secondary sanctions on Libya—both escalations that pushed targets to seek alternative channels rather than capitulate. The trend is the steady expansion of US extraterritorial economic statecraft since the 1917 Trading with the Enemy Act, through the 1996 Helms-Burton Cuba law, to today’s Russia-Iran package: the dollar’s dominance lets Congress threaten third-party states, shifting the cost of enforcement onto allies and rivals alike. For India—now sourcing over half its crude from Russia after the 2022-26 Gulf supply shocks—the Act forces a strategic choice between cheap energy and deeper US integration, underscoring how energy interdependence becomes a lever of geopolitical coercion. On a century scale, such moves may accelerate the gradual de-dollarisation and creation of alternative payment and trading blocs; or, if historical precedents hold, they may simply reroute commerce without achieving the desired political capitulation, leaving the US with more tariff tools but less goodwill.