US Sanctions Bill Threatens India With 100% Tariffs Over Russian Oil, But Leaves Uranium Trade Untouched

What happened

The US House of Representatives passed the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026 by a vote of 262-159 on September 16, sending it to President Trump for his signature after the Senate had already approved it 86-11 the previous month. Named for the Republican senator who championed it before his death in July, the bill hands the president discretionary authority to impose tariffs of up to 100% on countries that keep buying Russian oil and natural gas -- a list topped by China, India, Slovakia, Hungary and Azerbaijan. Crucially, that authority is a power the president may use, not an automatic penalty: the legislation does not itself put a 100% tariff on Indian goods, and any actual move would require a separate White House decision.

Uranium sits outside that fight almost entirely. The bill directs the administration to keep enforcing the ban Washington placed on Russian enriched-uranium imports in 2024, including material tied to Rosatom, Russia's state nuclear company. But it preserves the waiver system already built into that ban: imports can continue where the US Energy Secretary finds no viable alternative supplier, or where continuing them serves the national interest, through January 1, 2028. That matters because the US still leans on Russia for roughly 26% of the enrichment services it consumes -- more than domestic producers supply on their own -- so a sudden cutoff would strand American reactors, not just complicate Indian trade talks. India's own Minister of External Affairs, S. Jaishankar, has told Washington through diplomatic channels that New Delhi will "cross that bridge" if the tariff threat materializes, while continuing to defend Russian oil purchases as an energy-security necessity rather than a violation.

The details

The headline number is 100%, but the mechanism behind it is discretion, not automation. What the House actually passed on September 16 is a grant of tariff authority to the president against countries still buying Russian crude and gas -- China, India, Slovakia, Hungary and Azerbaijan chief among them -- not a tariff schedule that takes effect on its own. Trump has to choose to use it, and against whom, which is exactly why India's government has avoided treating the vote as an immediate crisis: Jaishankar's public line has been that New Delhi will deal with the tariff if it actually lands, not before.

Uranium tells a different story, and the contrast is the point of the bill's own design. Washington banned imports of Russian enriched uranium back in 2024, and this new legislation doesn't touch that ban -- it reinforces it, directing federal agencies to keep enforcing restrictions on material tied to Rosatom. But the 2024 ban was never a clean break, because the US can't yet make enough of its own enriched uranium to run its own reactor fleet. Government data puts Russia's share of the enrichment services the US actually consumed in 2025 at about 26%, ahead of the roughly 23% domestic producers supplied themselves. That gap is why the law keeps a waiver open through January 1, 2028: the Energy Secretary can approve continued Russian-linked imports whenever no other supplier can fill the gap, or when keeping the fuel flowing is judged to be in the national interest. A country can't sanction away a dependency it hasn't yet replaced, and the bill's drafters built that admission directly into the text rather than pretend otherwise.

That carve-out has nothing to do with India's own uranium supply, which is worth separating out because the headline invites the opposite assumption. India doesn't buy meaningfully from Russia for its reactor fuel -- its Department of Atomic Energy sources uranium from Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and, since a March 2026 nine-year deal with Cameco Corporation, Canada, with Australia newly cleared to export as of July 2026. State-run NTPC Limited has gone further still, seeking equity stakes in overseas uranium mines rather than relying only on supply contracts. None of that sourcing strategy is touched by this bill in either direction: it neither helps nor hurts India's nuclear fuel pipeline, because the fight here is entirely about crude oil revenue funding Russia's war, and uranium was carved out of that fight for reasons specific to the US market, not India's.

What actually is at stake for India is the oil bill, and the numbers there are large enough to explain Jaishankar's caution. Russian crude has made up somewhere around 35-40% of India's total crude imports since 2022, at a discount analysts estimate is worth $9-11 billion a year in avoided costs versus buying the same volumes at full market prices. A 100% tariff, if Trump ever chose to impose it, would erase that saving outright and then some -- which is the real number New Delhi is watching, not the uranium carve-out that dominated headlines alongside it.

Why it matters

For India, the practical takeaway is that two separate commodity relationships with Russia are being treated in two separate ways by the same piece of US legislation -- oil faces open-ended tariff risk tied to presidential discretion, while uranium faces none, because Washington's own reactors still need Russian enrichment capacity it hasn't replaced. Readers tracking India's nuclear-fuel security should note that its diversification into Uzbekistan, Canadian and Australian uranium supply continues on its own track, unaffected by this bill either way; readers tracking India's energy-import costs should watch whether Trump actually exercises the tariff authority Congress just handed him, since the bill itself decided nothing about that yet.